balancing action heresy?

[Ric Brekne]

Hi David

There are several weighs (grin) to approach the whole thing.  Nothing 
perse tells us we have to follow a distinct curve in the first place.. 
One can even opt for a big shift in weights from bass to tenor to create 
a kind of register change affect if you want. The point is the whats on 
one side of the lever must be balanced one way or another on the other side.

To your specific question. Remember that the origional action was 
balanced the old way. I suppose we are still talking about your old 
Bechstein E ?.  In anycase its likely they had the hammers mounted and 
the action nicely regulated before doing the weighoff.  A 50 gram (or 
close to that weight) is placed on the end of the keys and a leads are 
placed down the length of the key to ascertain when the key will start 
to drop.  You probably already know this... I just like telling 
stories.. :)  Ok.. so remembering that, the action was at one time 
balanced .. no friction discrepencies are accounted for in this method.. 
nor any ratio variances key to key. Pure static as is downweight. 
Upweight was generally not even considered further then a minimum lift.  
Balance weight was... well it didnt exist in most minds. Not an issue at 
the least.

Ok.. so you are looking at a previoiusly balanced action... and you are 
doing some evening out of hammer strikeweights... these are new hammers 
??.  If this is a high quality instrument... like your E once was... a 
lot of care was taken even back then to do things that created an even 
touch. Taking hammer dead weight was by no means unheard of.  
Speculation here of course... but it could be easily be that the 
origional hammers had a weight specification that is close to what you 
are employing now.  This happens of course... not unfrequently either 
really.  Even in lesser quality instruments for that matter. But I 
wouldnt count on it happening every time ... nor even in the majority of 
times. We hear from time to time from some distraught young one whoes 
just put on a new set of hammers and wonders why everything is suddenly 
so heavy :)

The nice thing about Stanwood is that if you do all the measurements 
ahead of time... then you KNOW what the result is going to be before you 
actually start putting things together.

One other point... since it seems you have assist springs. You should of 
course make all measurements with any whippen assist springs 
de-tached... and you should'nt really hook em back up until all else is 
finished. 

Cheers
RicB



-------

Granted I am a Stanwood novice:

But while I am going through and adding lead to the hammers, I'm finding 
if instead of evening out the hammer weight exactly to the curve and I 
deviate slightly from the curve...actually I am only evening out the 
hammer weights...not following a curve...YIKES...as I was saying, I can 
get my upweight and downweight in the generally right spot although the 
BW is not exact...but pretty close.   In other words I'm not having to 
deal with the key weights at all...at least on this action...Bechstein...

So am I to be burned at the stake?   I realize any differences in hammer 
weight will translate into slightly difference spring tensions and that 
is a trade off...what else am I missing...

Please David S...don't send anyone from Callahan's to knock me off...;-]   

This is all in the beginning stages, so If I'm screwing up royally I can 
back off...

David Ilvedson, RPT
Pacifica, CA 94044

heresy