Lacquer fight! Lacquer fight!

[Richard Brekne]

Erwinspiano@aol.com wrote:

>     >that this rebounding ability on a high quality hammer is reduced by
>     >lacquering. 
>
>   *To me This certainly seems to me to be the misinformation of this 
> thread but if you wish.... If so then  a hammer made with a good felt 
> but is not stiff enough or to springy for the tone desired then a 5-1 
> lacquer acetone solution ,or whatever, will stiffen the felt & improve 
> its rebound rate.*
>
>     On the other hand, it might be possible that on a hammer with a
>     >bad felt quality with excessive inner friction may be stabilized
>     to a better
>     >level by lacquering.
>
> It seems logic


Grin... I dont get this at all... on the one hand you reject Bernards 
reasoning  as misinformation, and then when he turns  around and uses 
the flip side of the same logic its perfectly ok.  You cant really have 
it both ways me thinks.

Certainly  lacquer application reduces the rebounding ability of a high 
quality (tensioned) hammer.  If you read Bernards paragraph 
disspationatly,  he is only saying that internal friction plays an 
important role in how much energy is lost to the strings, and that 
lacquer will impede that internal friction.  A direct consequence of 
reducing a hammers resiliency with lacquer that I see no point in trying 
to deny.  I am sure you are not suggesting that a hammer that requires 
needling should recieve lacquer to improve its sound now are you ? 
Neither that lacquer is for hammers of <<bad felt quality>> only ? Of 
course not.

The only point one can make here is to require Bernard to more closely 
specifiy what he means by <<high quality felt>>  as relating to 
hammers.  Obviously he is talking tensioned hammers, and not simply out 
of hand condemning softer hammers as <<bad quality>>.  And just as 
obviously this all puts us argueing sematics again.  If that is your 
point Dale.... to require people to not use words like <<ruin>> or 
<<high quality / bad quality>>  regardless of what qualifiers are (or 
are not included) because you find the use of these words somehow 
offensive to the discussion... then why dont you just say so ? All I see 
coming clearly through is a tenacious need to defend the use of lacquer, 
in the face of a non existant attack on that process. 

> *>> May I submit that the  Inner friction of felt  has always been a 
> fairly esoteric & small consideration to the discussion of hammers 
> even though it is a know factor & frankly to me personally not very 
> useful.*


Well.... our personal feelings and thoughts dont really matter much to 
way of things.  The contribution of inner friction of felt to energy 
transfer in piano hammers is what it is for reasons that dont have 
anything to do with what we want or dont. Tho I dont pretend to know how 
significant a factor this is.... I certainly dont have any problem 
including it into the discussion.  It seems tho.. that you write off its 
significance altogether... which would mean you have some knowledge of 
this internal friction process that you can share with us in defence of 
that claim.  Which I am sure we would all benifit from.

> *  Rgeards--Dale*
>
>
>     >
>     >regards,
>     >
>     >Bernhard
>
Cheers
RicB