<html> <body> Sarah, Now, thar ya' be goin' agin with all that there thinkin' and observin' and such....doncha know that's where all the trouble starts? Horace At 10:30 PM 8/21/2004, you wrote: <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>Hi all,   Thanks for the advice about techniques to even out the SW curve!  That should give me a variety of techniques to use/combine in order to even out the jags.   But the question is one of what my target curv= e should *really* be.  Hmmmm....  My thoughts:   The unmodified SW curve is obviously very linear.  (Yes, I know what linear means.  I "minored" in mathematics, sort of -- except that my U. didn't officially recognize minors).  Stanwood's curves, OTOH, are all concave downwards.   I was advised off list that I shouldn't force the hammers to artificially conform to a standardized Stanwood curve but to simply even out the jags to make the action smooth from bottom to top.  There's something to be said for this idea.   But as I got to thinking about the SW curves, = I was wondering, where do they REALLY come from?  That is, where does the shape come from?  I suspect the hammer manufacturing people might be able to enlighten me as to this.  (Ray???)  I'm *guessing* that the felt is denser than the molding, and when the hammer becomes skinnier, it loses more felt than molding, resulting in a more precipitous dropoff in weight at the higher end.  This would occur with a constant hammer length and a linear variation in hammer and molding (and felt) width.  Am I anywhere close on this idea???   Contrast this function with other functions that might actually relate to optimal hammer mass:  String length and mass both decrease with the note number, with a function that is concave upwards.  Note frequency increases with a function that is concave upwards.  Note period (inverse of frequency) increases with a function that is concave upwards.  The Stanwood curve seems rather meaningless with regard to any of these functions.  For instance, it might be good to match hammer mass to string mass by some proportion.  Right?  As the scale goes up, string length and mass approach an asymptote of zero.  Therefore, shouldn't hammer mass approach an asymptote of zero?  Instead, the curve starts taking a dive in the treble.  If the scale went up well past 88, hammer mass would eventually crash to zero.  Because these curves do not have the same form, the relationship between hammer and string mass is anything but constant.  That doesn't make sense.   So is this something that is the way it is jus= t because of tradition -- because the cauls are built that way, and that's what ya' get?    Now that I look at my linear SW curve (with jags), I'm wondering if this isn't REALLY a closer match to something meaningful (like string mass) than the idealized Stanwood curves.  Any thoughts, y'all?   Peace, Sarah      </blockquote></body> </html>