Leveling a plate? Del? Ron? Anybody?

[Tom Cole]

btrout@desupernet.net wrote:
> 
> The recent thread on removing bass strings brought this up briefly.
> 
> How do you set a grand plate that sets on wooden dowels so that the
> plate goes in 'unstressed'?

I attended the last half of a class given by Shawn Hoar (Unique Tools
and Technology) at the February Cal State Convention wherein he
demonstrated his method of doing just what your talking about.

He had suspended a piano plate above the rim using pipe clamps (2 pairs
of clamps on each pipe - the lower pair clamps the top and bottom of the
rim and the upper clamp holds the plate, equidistant from each contact
point as well as possible). Then he could measure the distance between
each plate boss and corresponding dowel, and plate webbing and pin block
surface, such that adjustments could be made without any guesswork. He
even had a router set up that would resurface the top of the pin block
(indexing on the underside of the webbing) so that when the plate was
lowered into the piano, every point of contact was perfect. You wouldn't
have to fasten first to the pin block and then bend it down at the nose.

Sorry, I can't give you much more detail than that. But I thought it
might be enough to experiment with.

Tom

-- 
Thomas A. Cole, RPT
Santa Cruz, CA
mailto:tcole@cruzio.com