Greg is doing a great job of describing this daylong concert prep. Just one thing- for hammer shaping he started with an 80 grit strip and spent the most time with that getting the shape just right. Then he jumped up to 320 grit and went from there. There were a few other things that struck me in the demo. 1. He very thoroughly cleans the key pins with a cotton cloth wetted with what he called "methylated alcohol". I took that to mean denatured alcohol. He used a shoeshine motion. 2. He stuck a strip of newspaper under the end glide bolts and clamped down the ends of the key frame. He adjusted the bolts so the paper slides out with a little resistance but does not tear. To check the other bolts he lifts and knocks at the same time and talked about how easy it is to get fooled using other tests. 3. He put the action on top of the piano and set the fallboard up behind it resting on its hinge side. He set the keyslip on top of the hammer flanges. Now he had a black foreground and background and white hammers coming up in between. He used this set up for hammerline, and fine tuning the letoff and drop. Very clear and easy to see slight differences. 4. He glued two felt mutes together side to side to form a split mute. He uses this during voicing to very quickly isolate any one string of a trichord. Great class. Ted Kidwell, RPT California State University, Sacramento Capistrano Hall, rm. 153 6000 J Street Sacramento, CA 95819-6015 916.278.6737 -----Original Message----- From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Greg Granoff Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 11:02 AM To: caut at ptg.org Subject: Re: [CAUT] Mythbusters He uses teflon tape backed strips of diamond grit paper only just as wide as an individual hammer. He begins with around 320 I think he said, graduates to maybe 600 if he feels it necessary, and finishes off with 1200. Obviously, the procedure might eliminate the coarsest grit if it wasn't necessary to actually reshape significantly. In the class, he began by making a very small change in the shape of the hammer, eliminating a slight bulge in the shoulders facing the keyboard that made a slightly asymmetrical look. He holds the strip against the hammer shoulder to index the strip's horizontal angle for a straight striking point. Later, if he is fine mating hammers to strings, he has even narrower strips to make the change he needs on one string position at a time. He finds these problems with the method of lifting the hammer/shank to the string with a hook, and plucking with a tapered hammer shank. He says he never files through the strings for mating, since he is fanatical about keeping the correct shape on the "nose" of the hammer, as he called it, and his strip method lets him do this. Greg -----Original Message----- From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Fred Sturm Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 9:24 AM To: caut at ptg.org Subject: Re: [CAUT] Mythbusters On Mar 8, 2010, at 3:13 PM, Greg Granoff wrote: > For me, it was extremely useful to see his hammer filing technique > (he never > gang-files) and the materials he used, and he kept up a running > commentary > as he worked, crisply answering questions in a careful but efficient > Germanic way without ever losing momentum. How does he file? Paddle? Strip? Regards, Fred Sturm University of New Mexico fssturm at unm.edu
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