boring hammers

[Richard Brekne]

Hi Stéphane

You've gotten most of the answers you need so I'll just add this short 
comment.  I asked Steinway and Sons about this buisness about rake, 
perpendicular to shank at strike vs perpendicular to the string at 
strike.. etc etc... and they said that no factory in the world really 
has time to pay much attention to any of that.  Some factories figure 
the bore length the way it is commonly defined here on this list... 
string to key bed distance - hammer center to keybed distance, some just 
have a standard length they impose.  They said outright this is an area 
that the lone one man shop tech can most definitely improve on a 
factories work... but then on the other hand the value of that 
improvement was in general for the most part questionable... depending 
on the quality of the factory we are talking about.

I know there are those with passionate views about.  And I do not mean 
to rile anyones feathers... I am just repeating what I heard.  I might 
add I have heard basically the same story from Yamaha, Schimmel, Petrof, 
Bechstein and Bosendorfer.

For my part... I continue at present to make the hammer perpendicular to 
the shank at string impact.  Tho I am starting to take a closer look at 
what this results in in terms of offset angle to the string.  I may 
adjust my proceedure in the future if I see a good enough reason to do so.

Cheers
RicB