Actually I was talking about variations in flexibility and accompanying tonal variation. It's not at all clear, yet, that weight translates directly to flexibility and I've not yet heard that reason given for why people are sorting shanks. David Love davidlovepianos at comcast.net www.davidlovepianos.com -----Original Message----- From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of ricb at pianostemmer.no Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2008 4:15 PM To: caut at ptg.org Subject: [CAUT] FW: weighing shanks : was spread sheet ---- Original Message ---- From: ricb at pianostemmer.no To: pianotech at ptg.com Subject: weighing shanks : was spread sheet Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2008 01:09:44 +0100 Actually, since variations in flexibility is rather a mirror image of variations in stiffness, and that in turn is very closely related to specific gravity of a given shank... and that in turn is directly related to its radius weight... sorting shanks by radius weight is doing exactly what you state below.... and indeed is one of the basic motivators why many folks are taking the time to sort and match to hammers weights Cheers from NY City RicB ............ If you wanted to get very picky about potential tonal differences it might be worth considering the variations in flexibility between shanks of equal diameter. Certainly rib flexibility (or stiffness) varies with ribs of the same dimension, why not shanks, I suppose. Maybe that's what the shank resonance thing speaks to-and perhaps the weight indirectly. At this point, I'm not convinced that other aspects of tonal variation (like soundboard resonances for example) so complicate teasing out that variable that it's worth the trouble. At a certain point, no matter what you do, voicing needs to be the last line of defense. The point at which each tech decides to put that into play, of course, will vary.
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