S&S alignment

[Newton Hunt]

This is not an entirely unusual situation.

The one thing you do NOT want to do is to shim the stop block.  Doing
so will mislaying everything.

Start by spacing the hammer shanks perpendicular to the hammer rail. 
Insert the action and then
spacing the hammers to the strings, starting at the top of the middle
section.  The reason for this is that those strings are perpendicular
to the action rails.  Then check that the hammer is parallel to the
wippens.  At this point you can insert or remove shims at the stop
block until the hammer shanks and wippens are parallel with each other
and perpendicular to the rails.

If this is not possible then remove enough parts to be able to lay a
square across the hammer and wippen rails to see that the holes are
indeed properly aligned.  The offending rail can be unsoldered and
realigned if needful.  

Checking and spacing the action in the action box is the first step to
the foundation of a good regulation.  From there everything else
devolves.

I learned this lesson once when I found a similar situation and
decided to continue anyway.  About half way through the regulation I
realized I could not make everything align and stood there staring at
the thing until I finally decided to go back and do it right.  I lost
a day but was a cheap lesson in the end.

It is rare to have to resoldered rails because of horizontal
misalignment but improper spread action is common and split rails is
even more often than that.  There is someone who advertises in the
classified section of the Journal that does this type of work if you
do not wish to tackle it yourself.  Make darn sure it is needed then
proceed with great care and well thought out procedures before
beginning.  I have don this, so have others on this list, so we can
walk you through the process.

		Newton