[pianotech] Pitch change, etc.

[William Truitt]

Ahem, Mr. Farrell!!  I live in Cow Hampshire, remember - you and Ron came to
our Regional.  How could you forget ME?!! I thought you would still be
having nightmares from the experience!  

Who lives in Florida that sells this stuff?  Is he good?  Is he reliable?
Don't recommend him unless you have good things to say!  :-) 

Will

P. S.  So I stole some of Joe Garrett's exclamation points.  Sue me!


-----Original Message-----
From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf
Of Terry Farrell
Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2010 11:49 AM
To: pianotech at ptg.org
Subject: Re: [pianotech] Pitch change, etc.

Hi Will,

That Ron guy who responded to your post has a great POWER notcher -  
easy for him to say it's not hard to hand-notch! That being said, it  
may just be my poor notching skills, but I did make up a cap of  
quarter-sawn 0.5 mm laminations early on in my cap building efforts  
and found it quite difficult to notch. Yes, I could do it, but it sure  
didn't look very good. Again, maybe it's my lack of notching skill,  
maybe the quarter-sawn is more difficult to chisel smoothly than flat- 
sawn - I don't know. No reason for you to not give it a try though.

What I have been doing is building laminating caps with quarter-sawn  
1.5 mm laminations. I'll usually have about six laminations in a cap.  
These I find easier to hand notch as you are usually only going  
through two bonding surfaces or so.

Do they perform as well as the thinner laminations (stability,  
clarity, etc.)? I don't know for sure as I have not ever tested side- 
by-side. They do however seem to work quite well. I also set each  
bridge pin in epoxy (put epoxy in hole and on pin).

I apply unthickened epoxy to the notches, but not to the bridge top  
(leave it nakey).

I haven't been using any filler on my caps. I used some one time and  
it made the epoxy white - I like the looks of the clear. When I bond  
the laminations together, I wrap the assembly in plastic to retain the  
oozing epoxy - works quite well.

Some things to think about anyway. Let us know what route you end up  
going and how it works out. BTW, I know a guy down in Florida who  
actually builds the type of cap I have described here and sells them  
to the trade!

Terry Farrell

PS: You live in Massachusetts and can't find good hard  
maple?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

On Apr 6, 2010, at 5:50 PM, William Truitt wrote:

> I find the idea of the epoxy laminated caps very interesting, in part
> because of the difficulty in consistently getting good hard rock maple
> bridge stock.  I can't speak to the tuning stability, but it would  
> seem
> likely that the epoxy saturation would form a vapor barrier  
> throughout the
> wood, thereby negating the effects of humidity on the cap and any  
> movement
> of the wood associated with that.
>
> I had wanted to roll my own epoxy laminated bridge caps for my last  
> rebuild,
> but was unable to find a supplier for the veneers required to make  
> up the
> pieces.  I did chase one idiot supplier for 6 weeks, but could not  
> get him
> to send me the veneers before I gave up on him.
>
> Any recommendations for a supplier, anyone?  I'm starting a B in a  
> month or
> so that will get a new board and caps.
>
> Will Truitt