At 1:23 PM -0700 8/23/04, pianolover 88 wrote: >Quick dictionary check on the word: "reshape" > >reshape vt >1. to alter or restore the shape of something. You're certainly altering the flattened crown, and restoring it to it's original curved shape. That's what I tell my pianists: for the hammer can rebound from the string with minimal contact time, the strike surface needs to be the tip of a curved crowned, not a blunt flat one (anywhere from 1/4" to 3/4"). Certainly Cap'n Joe, when the felt fibers are laid down and the felt mass built up at the factory, the fibers are being fed on in long gossamer sheets in which the fibers are roughly parallel. However this layer business is probably put "out-of-focus" by the fulling process, the mechanical pounding of the original light & fluffy sheet into a much denser one. (It's the felt factory's equivalent of the steel mill's drop-forging.) So your concept of "Surfacing, Resurfacing or Filing", while valuable as an visualization of what we want to do, may not have nearly the basis it might once we move from the deal to the practical. At 10:14 AM -0700 8/23/04, Joe Garrett wrote: >If we follow the "natural" curvature, (ie shape), we will have taken >off continuous layer of felt. This leaves a continuous layer on the >top surface of the hammer. IMO, this lends to better/easier voicing >possibilities. Let's examine two ways that a filing of the hammer could depart from the original shape. 1.) Too much off the shoulders, leaving the topmost layers of the crown with nothing on the shoulders to attach to. (This is the famous Steinway "diamond shape" of legend.) This wouldn't be inherently fatal to good tone because if it left the top of the crown unattached to anything, the effect would be to lower its tension. And as soon as you went deep enough into the crown, you'd run into layers which were attached top the shoulders, and hence firmer. Here we have a soft strike point lying on top of firm layers, IMMHO opinion, the recipe for good tone. (The actual thickness of these zones is where the tech is applying art.) 2.) Too much off the crown, leaving a sizeable portion of the shoulder unconnected to the crown, and just lying there inert. This is the well-known "mushroom shape" which develops slowly over many filings, despite the best efforts of the tech to avoid it. But here I'm not too worried either. I'll grant you these unconnected portions of the shoulder (think of them as saddle-bags, office-worker spread, whatever...) probably don't participate in the crown/shoulder flexing as do the connected portions, and that they're just hanging there, inert. I'm just not sure that these saddle-bags would interfere with the connected portions just inwards from them. What counts here is that you have a curved strike point and that it's connected to the shoulders (with out without saddle bags). >Same dictionary check on word: "Surfacing" (or) resurfacing= No >entries found for >"surfacing" or "resurfacing." >Thesauraus= developing (adjective): embryonic, growing, evolving, >budding, sprouting I'd save the word "surfacing" for gluing buckskin (or nameboard felt) over the top treble hammers (or re-treading a truck tire). "Filing" tells me a sandpaper file was used, but not necessarily what the finished result was. >seems like "reshape(ing)" is the correct term. Me too. At 10:14 AM -0700 8/23/04, Joe Garrett wrote: >On that, I'll let y'all ponder, for a while. For those who choose to >continue to use the archaic/incorrect term, so be it. IMO, ya just >don't get it!<G> Most on this list espouses making changes for the >better, in our industry. This is one of those changes, that is way >overdue. Think about it. Right, it's Morning in America and the realization is just dawning across this great land. Over night the last few hold-outs in this matter of terminology came to their senses. The entire piano service industry has stopped calling this step re-shaping, and a giant stumbling block to the quality of our service has been removed, and the piano buying public feels a weight lifted from their shoulders. And the Golden Age of Pianos greets a new day. (Go ahead Joe, I'm just asking to be spanked....)
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