To answer the magical Richard Moodini and other inquring minds: Direction of the grain in an upright hammer shank should run with the motion of the hammer/shank assembly toward the string. That is, right-angled to the plane of the strings. When preparing the shanks to be glued into the hammer head (and this is done first, before that assembly is glued into the butt) when you put a slit into the side of the shank for air release, if you put the slit on the side of the shank that will face the strings, it is easy to correctly align all the shanks during gluing. It winds up just like that baseball bat. You'll hit a home run every time! This thread actually started out about grand hammer shanks although it is not so easy to work with grand shanks before hammer installation. We don't do anything extra with grand shanks. If we have trouble during voicing - and André described the situation during tuning - we replace the shank. That is another reason to use hot hide glue for hammer gluing; it's easier to undo and new hide glue works very well with any old hide glue left soaked into the hammer or shank when re-gluing. Joel Rappaport Round Rock, Texas Richard Moody wrote: > > OK Listen to how the shanks sound and group how you like. Then roll > them to select the straightest. Then start all over. But the > question I want to ask is what is the ideal direction the grain > should run? Like how should you hold the baseball bat? > Does this apply to shanks? > O f course the grand rebuilders are sittng on the side lines on > this one. [snip] > Richard Moodini
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