Return Springs on a Baldwin 243

[Bill Ballard]

Thanks to all for your suggestions. I saw the piano again today. The 
keyboard is quite floppy. I had already Protek-ed the but centers 
realizing that starting the hammer back from the string with far less 
spring strength would mean its return was much more vulnerable  to 
butt center friction. I didn't notice anything out of hand before, 
though. The jacks all made a common snap sound, hitting the butt 
felts. Mark's suggestion about the catch (check) distance was good 
although I was limited in the extent to which I could use it 
successfully. The butt leathers are not dented (they're like slightly 
flexible concrete). I already put in one beautiful butt (from a 
complete set of Baldwins in '92--gorgeous buckskin), and that didn't 
reliably improve it.

Patrick and Newton suggested non-existent upweight, Am I was leaning 
there myself. In fact that's what I found. Downweights in the 
mid-30s, and upweights in the single digits. So I rebalanced the # 
from C#3 to F#5 (in the center section) for 25g upweight, with 
quik-skrewed jiffy weights. The downweights are now only lifted up to 
the mid-40s.

But I still needed to improve the jack's return on a very slow 
release with a trace of lost motion, so that isn't entirely the 
answer.

I feel as though I should beef up the hammer springs just slightly, 
which will slightly (yeah, right....) increase the touchweights. So I 
might be back where I started from, but I can't actually conclude 
that until I reset one or two springs to surmise what the original 
touchweights may have been.

My suspicion is that it's a particular balancing of hammerspring AND 
jack spring AND lost motion AND back-leading, all other things being 
reasonable as they now are. The teacher and her students are going to 
try it for a week.

Measuring  touchweights in verticals is near useless anyway, because 
the particular touchweight you read, either up or down, is a function 
of how far into the stroke you are and how much of the hammer's 
weight is directly above the hammer center bearing its load. (As well 
as a function of the usual gang of suspects.) Fortunately as the 
jack's purchase on the under side of the butt decreases as the parts 
cycle through, the weight of the hammer and but are being more and 
more supported by the butt center.

So we'll see. Once again thanks for everyone's response. I thought I 
was going to have to try switching temperaments or something.

Bill Ballard, RPT
NH Chapter PTG


".......true more in general than specifically"
     ...........Lenny Bruce, spoofing a radio discussion of the Hebrew 
roots of Calypso music
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