Heavy hammers

[Richard Brekne]

This is one of the most common oversights in changing hammers around it
would seem. Even if you dont do Stanwood, not paying attention to basic
hammer weight reveals (most often) a lack of understanding of very basic
touchweight concerns. I hear about this kind of thing so often really
that I am beginning to wonder if the PTG should make some kind of a
point out of assuring that RPT testing includes basic touchweight
knowledge.

If the Downweight (please clarify by the way if you mean DW by your use
of the word touchweight) has increased roughly 12 grams then your new
hammers are roughly 1 + grams heavier then the old ones. If they have
not been reshaped or tailed then you should be able to get what you need
off.

The basic proceedure is to shape the tails first (I love my Spurlock
Tail shaper, and a drum sander attached to my drill press), and then
take whats needed off the sides of the hammers, being carefull not to
remove any of the width of the hammer at the striking point. 

I usually take a couple hours, but I am slower then some.

Cheers
RicB

Ted Simmons wrote:
> 
> A piano teacher bought a used Yamaha G3 which had a nice touch before the
> rebuilder installed new hammers.  Now the touchweight is 65 grams and she
> and her students are complaining about the heavy touch.   I had a set of
> used Yamaha C3 hammers in my shop and substituted a couple of those hammers
> for the heavy ones and the touchweight dropped to 53 grams.
> 
> What is the most expeditious way to remove some of the weight from the
> hammers?  I don't like the idea of using a sandpaper paddle to take that
> much weight off; too labor intensive and with today's modern tools there
> must be an easier way.  How would the list members handle this?
> 
> Ted Simmons
> Merritt Island, FL
> 
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