stringing scale on old grand

[Paul Mulik]

Hello list,

I'm rebuilding a 100-year-old old Frank S. Botefuhr (stencil) grand that was given to me free of charge.  Mostly, I'm just doing this for the eductional experience, but I hope to end up with a saleable piano when I'm done.  

After measuring downbearing at several points and lowering the string tension as Reblitz recommends, I removed the treble strings (starting from the top), measuring them with a music wire gauge as I went.  I had expected to find that six or eight consecutive notes would have the same size wire, then the wire size would be a half-size larger for the next six or eight notes, etc., all the way down.  However, this was not the case on this piano.  Through most of the treble and tenor, the wire size was the same for about an octave, then it was abruptly 1.5 sizes larger. 

So I'm wondering which is the case:

A:  the piano was restrung at some point by someone who was too lazy (or ignorant) to use the correct size of wire, and just used what he had on hand

or B:  the piano really came out of the factory like this.

In either case, when it comes to restringing, should I use the same sizes as before, or interpolate half sizes in between the abrupt changes?  I was thinking that if there are say, twelve consecutive notes that are size 16 and then the size changes to 17.5, maybe I should use size 16 for four notes, size 16.5 for four notes, and size 17 for four notes.  Is this a dumb idea?

Thanks,
Paul Mulik
Joplin MO  
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