[CAUT] Getting straight

[Scott E. Thile]

Hello Ed,

I no longer have it, but I made a simple solution that involved pulling the
wire off of the wooden spools Mapes used to sell their wire on. It was all
on a plywood board about 18" square. The wooden spool would rotate on a
dowel. The wire would leave the spool, go through a wire brad, then stager
through two angled hammer shanks, which would straighten the wire, with the
angle such as would also hold the wire down against the board, and then it
would go through another staple to keep it from easily escaping. This also
kept the wire taught and captured after clipping it off to length. 

I've been planning to make something similar that includes some sort of
spooling arrangement one could slide the wire onto (in order to accommodate
the way wire comes these days). I think Mapes still sells their stock wire
in 5 lbs wooden spools, but I don't think the high grade wire comes that
way. My arrangement looked something like the attached picture.

All the best,
Scott

Scott E. Thile
Piano/Instrument Technician
---------------------------
Dept. of Music, Murray State University
504 Fine Arts Building, Murray, KY 42071
Office Phone: 270-809-4396 
http://campus.murraystate.edu/staff/scott.thile/index.html


> -----Original Message-----
> From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On 
> Behalf Of A440A at aol.com
> Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2008 5:25 PM
> To: pianotech at ptg.org; caut at ptg.org
> Subject: [CAUT] Getting straight
> 
> 
> Greetings, 
>    Interesting article by Jim Ellis etal in the journal this 
> month inre false 
> beats from wire twisting against the curl.   I just finished 
> stringing the 
> "blood" piano, taking care to keep the curl consistant, and 
> will be interested 
> in seeing if there is any difference.  It was a hassle, in 
> certain areas, to 
> keep the curl where I wanted it to be,
> so,  now I want to figure a way to straighten the wire before 
> installing. 
>    I have used the brakes on the small wire reels to 
> straighten the wire, but 
> they don't do a very consistant job, leaving me with thoughts 
> of small ball 
> bearing wheels with grooves on them and pulling the wire 
> through as I use it.  
> I don't want to re-invent this thing, so if anybody has 
> already developed a 
> workable device and found that it makes a difference, how 
> about posting 
> something to the list on how well it works and is it worth 
> the trouble. 
> Thanks, 
> 
> Ed Foote RPT 
> http://www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/index.html
> www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/well_tempered_piano.html
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