At 22:50 -0600 09/01/2011, Ron Nossaman wrote: >"Piano Parts and Their Function", which is one of the very few >attempts out there to standardize nomenclature to even a minimal >degree (and seems to be almost universally ignored by most) says >it's a middle belly bar, or cross block. Neither of these terms are >obvious, evocative, or even technically descriptive, which makes >them essentially useless. Well whatever it is it's not a belly-bar and it's not the crossblock. A belly bar is what the Americans call a rib and the crossblock is what the Germans call the Damm and Steinway call the crossblock (which is probably one good reason to be suspicious of the term!). I've always called it the Damm because only German s seemed to have a name for it. But the Damm, for me, is just the "back wall" of the action housing where the bracings are attached. >It seems to be up for grabs. I tend to call the whole assembly the >belly rail, with more specific parts designation by description as >necessary, lacking anything more precise. Should a rational set of >nomenclature suddenly surface, that's widely acceptable, I'd be >happy to play. Well the word 'rail', in my book, can only be used for long thin things and the word 'block' is used for short fat things like keyblocks. So the picture illustrates, attached to the soundboard, the part that I refer to as the belly rail. Leaving aside what the proper term is for the Damm, we are left with one great long chunk of wood without a name, and this must be called something by the people who make it because it is not one part with the Damm until they are glued together. Neither Schimmel nor Herbert Shead give it a name. Schimmel says the Americans call the Damm the liner. I you want a real good laugh, go to Grand Piano on Wikipedia and open the file <http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Fortepian_-_schemat.svg>. And that's not the only example. I can't find a single realistic cross-section on the WWW except for scannings of Schimmel's Nomenclatur, and the English terms there are often very doubtful or missing. JD -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20110110/5bbe16e7/attachment-0001.htm> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: damm.jpg Type: application/octet-stream Size: 17020 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20110110/5bbe16e7/attachment-0001.obj>
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