At 08:38 PM 8/19/99 -0400, you wrote: >Friends, > >Today I brought home a hammer spring rail which needs all the springs >replaced. It is from a 1980 Everett studio piano. I'm sure information >on how to do this is published somewhere. Could someone please steer me >in the right direction? > >Also, I was surprised that my magnet would not pick up springs that had >broken off in the action. I thought these springs were made of steel. >What _are_ they made of? > >Regards, >Clyde Hollinger > I guess they're brass. I've done a fair number of hammer return spring replacements and find it easy and rewarding. Take off the cloth, clean off the glue (steam or scrape), remove the old springs. For installation, the key is using a piece of wire to insert through the loops as you first install them to keep them from twisting out of alignment til you can route the back end of the wire through the other hole, pull tight, and snip. To restate a little clearer, insert the new springs in the holes, and as you go, insert a piece of straight wire into the loop of the spring. If your wire is as long as the rail, you can insert all the springs and they will stay in place ready for the next step of securing the back end of the wire. With practice, you can get the procedure down to a little over an hour or so. One word of caution, on an action model I have measured a difference in downweight of 17 grams between a spring with almost no tension and one with maximum tension. They can make more difference to the touch than hammer weight and center pin friction combined. I don't measure them with a tension gauge, but somebody probably does. I usually eyeball the angle that the old ones sat at at rest and try to duplicate. The newly installed springs will sit naturally at a much stronger angle, so keep the straight wire in the loops until you have bent them all down to where they should be. Good luck. Ken Jankura RPT South Central PA Chapter
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC