Hey Clark What you describe I find myself undoing routinely on jobs that come in for a board. The statement is made that the action has been rebuilt but it doesn't play well....it's heavy...fill in the blanks. A well meaning person simply made a decision without any action protocol information & chose the original knuckle placement parts, Installed too heavy a hammer, which compounded original poor key leverages etc. Whenever you find short dip & long blow the action ration is high. In this case probably 6.5 or more. When initial tear down is first contemplated, a quick regulation of one note will give you this first clue as to action ratio problems. 5 minutes saves countless hours of grief. AMHIK! A 17 mm knuckle often solves much of this leverage problem or gets it headed in the right direction, but also a capstan move is also needed to get the leverage into the ballpark. I wonder if there is enough wood left in the keys to salvage or if the rations are so whacked that a new key set is in order any way. Stanwood made simple for me is as follows. I have a action ration finder which is simply a small 3 inch long by 1/2 inch square block of maple that has a tapered 6 mm shoe on the bottom & a 1/2 ich lead in the top to hold down the key. With three level white keys & three level hammers I can set this gauge on the keys & in 5 seconds measure the amount of hammer travel in mm , then divide by six & I have an action ration number that is close enough to tell me which way I need to go with the parts choice, capstan move & hammer weight. A depth gauge placed at the top of the hammer which moved upward & the bottom of the ruler in the gauge hit both hammer tops simultaneaously. ie say 32 mm is a 5.33 action ration which is great. & 36mm would be 6 which is going to have the problems you describe. Hope this helps I'll post a pic. later if you wish.......off to church.............................seeyalaterbye Dale Hi, All! I have been dealing with a S&S B that I found with up to 9 leads in some of the low tenor keys. All the parts had been replaced with Renner to get rid of the Teflon flanges, but it was heavy, sluggish, and just a chore to play for long. I am not all that familiar with the Stanwood protocols, but as time goes on, the concept gets more and more attractive. What I found, was that I had to shorten the dip, lengthen the blow, to get it less laborious to play. So, what I suspect , is that the capstan placement is incorrect for the parts used, or was incorrect from the start? They also had the damper timing late to try to make it feel lighter, so late that the hammer almost hit the strings before it lifted. Ric, your comments on the more creative combinations of blow, dip, etc hit a chord with me on this beast. There were too many leads in from the factory, and you could tell be looking that some more were added with the new parts, as they did not look factory at all, so the problems just got worse, evidently with the parts replacement. Clark A. Sprague, RPT -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20061029/d603b82b/attachment.html
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC