[CAUT] durability (was funding)

[Susan Kline]

This post is really a keeper, Ed. Thank you. If you find yourself
idly meandering through "ETC, ETC........." some day in your thoughts,
and come up with a few more durability jewels hiding in the cracks,
I'm sure we'd enjoy seeing them.

Susan Kline

At 08:06 PM 9/29/2006, you wrote:
>Inre Vanderbilt, Joel writes:
>
><< I read this to mean that you may be doing well.
>The Wall Street Journal article this week lead me
>to believe your Chancellor is filling the coffers
>quite well.>>
>
>     Yes, we are well financed.  Of late, Martha Ingram donated $ 250,000,000
>to Vanderbilt, so Blair School of Music got a new concert hall, new D, new
>building wing, etc.
>      One thing that helps is that we are using a lot of pianos that I began
>restoring in the early 1980's.  The work was done in accordance to the
>procedures I learned from David Betts and Bill Garlick, and time has 
>proven the
>durability of their techniques.  This makes it easier to sell the value of
>rebuilding vs. loaner or trading in old pianos for new.
>      One of our senior piano faculty is using an M that was done in 1983 and
>is still performing well, (albeit getting a little light and brassy).  That
>action job was billed at $ 1750 at the time, so the last 23 years of 
>use seems
>like a bargain.  The administration now accepts that $9,500 for a 
>complete new
>action will also be seen as a bargain in 23 more years, so they are happy to
>fund that rather than spend $ 50,000 for a new piano!
>      Refusing to cut corners, using the best materials available, 
> and putting
>in the time to do the best work requires a little faith on the front end, but
>after standing the test of time, proves to be the best support for funding
>top-dollar work that I can find.
>      There are a lot of things that go into it: ie, damper wires 
> that are not
>only polished, but aligned so that they don't press into the guide bushings,
>insures that the damper felt is going to stay in the same travel and the felt
>lasts longer.   NEVER pushing a mute into a trichord without lifting the
>wedges helps longevity, too.  (how many techs always lift the damper 
>out of the way
>before moving the mute through the wound trichords on a D? This is
>important!)   Proper alignment of the underlevers to key-end felt is 
>crucial to
>durability.
>      Stopping the damper pedal travel via felt blocks on the trapwork levers
>directly over the pedal rods prevents someone's foot force from finding its
>way to the upstop rail. Same goes for the sostenuto; that 
>intermediate lever can
>be broken if the original felt block by the pitman is made to take the full
>force of the pedal, I like to stop it against the keybed directly over the
>pedal rod, too.  Una corda is often tricky, there are often cut-out 
>recesses under
>there, but a leather or hard felt stop on the top of the shift lever can
>fashioned. This prevents the keyframe contact point from gradually 
>getting crushed
>by the pedal jamming it against the stop screw.
>     I think fastidious traveling of the shanks improves the 
> durability of the
>pinning,( I pin a little firmer on school pianos).   Making sure there is no
>lost motion between jack and knuckle allows the knuckle to stay round for
>longer periods of time.  Coordinating the blow,let-off, and keydip 
>to prevent the
>jack from jamming allows the let-off punchings to live longer.  Firm jack
>pinning, (4-5 grams) doesn't slow repetition down at all, but 
>prevents jacks from
>going off-center with all the attendant lopsided wear and failure 
>that ensues.
>  I use hide glue because I will need to replace parts in the future and it
>makes it soooo easy.
>    Needling sufficient resilience into the hammers seems to let them live
>longer as opposed to leaving them so hard that all of the impact force is
>concentrated in the strike zone, causing a more rapid erosion of the 
>felt.  Hammer
>tails don't need to be roughened if they are cut squarely on a 3" 
>radius and the
>back-checks are properly angled. I have back-checks from the 1930's in this
>school that are just fine, while I have seen poorly adjusted new 
>ones wear out
>in 10 years of heavy use.  It helps to taper tails as little as possible,too.
>    Polished and nick-free front pins greatly increase key bushing life.  HOW
>can the Steinway factory have let so many of these pins be damaged in the
>spacing process?  The bushings will last for about the warranty 
>period, then you
>have a sloppy keyboard. I bush keys with as little caul pressure as I can,
>since the more pressure on the glue, the less glue is pressed into 
>the felt, which
>effectively decreases the working dimension of the felt.  Bushings wear
>longer .
>ETC, ETC......... There is a way to build actions so that they last.  It
>takes longer and costs a little more, but I want every action I 
>rebuild to go out
>there as advertising for my work.  I live with almost all of my rebuilds for
>decades, so I want them to be as maintenance-free as possible. It frees up
>budgets to cover more pianos.
>Regards,
>
>Ed Foote RPT
>http://www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/index.html
>www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/well_tempered_piano.html
>
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