I suppose given the obvious pointer to the keys, most folks would get that far and not bother looking further as one would expect to see more of the same in anycase. Reasonable enough. What puzzles me is that with such procedures there seems to be no real data of any kind which indicates what degree of key stiffening is needed in any given type of action.... yet folks go trudging on in and stiffen away seemingly without further ado... good woodworking or not. The obvious question is how does one ascertain when any given level of key stiffness is mooted by the rest of the actions lack of "stiffness" ? For that matter, we dont really know much about if and when a key becomes <<too stiff>>. Folks more or less just see if they are bendable to some degree they cant really explain how they arrived at, and just start adding key material. Misunderstand me correctly. I'm not saying that keys never need to be stiffened.... but I do question the basis on which this is done or not. Personally, I've never run into an instrument where this was anything close to a <<must do>> Cheers RicB What puzzles me is that you are able to tell the difference in this case between a proper job and a botch, and yet, in the case of the totally non-stellar eyes on the bass strings you brought up in the last thread, after 40 years of experience with properly made eyes you were unable to see that these were quite unacceptable in every possible way. JD
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