action brackets, ivories, steam

[Dave Nereson]

Thanks for the responses.  I don't want to rebuild the old Premier with
the bad action brackets -- just was wondering if there was another
action bracket available I could use so I could replace them, and
regulate it close enough to be playable for the owner, an elderly woman
who just plays casually now and then and isn't going to buy another
piano at this stage in her life.   The rest of the piano is "OK" --
soundboard, sustain, and tone are good for an old, small grand  -- it
never got that much use, but as it is, it's just taking up room and is
un-sellable with the action un-regulatable because of the cracked and
swollen (?) action brackets.
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    Newton, I was soaking the wafers for 30 seconds, 'cause on the
directions it says to dip them for a half a minute, but now maybe I'll
try a shorter dip.  Thanks.
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    Whatever happened to Susan Graham?  I thought she was an excellent
technician and gave a great seminar on grand action reconditioning &
regulating 10 years or so ago.  Also wrote good, useful articles in the
Journal.
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    I'm under the impression that steaming hammers is supposed to loosen
them up, let them "bloom out" a little, and unpack the dense felt.
However, after getting wet, wool, upon drying, shrinks.  Does the drying
cause a reversal of the effect of steaming?  Or can the wool simply not
shrink and compact back to the hard, packed condition it was in (at
least under the strike point) before steaming?  I have steamed a couple
sets of hammers and it did soften the tone quite a bit -- maybe too
much -- it's hard to know how far to go -- but after a few months, the
tone had brightened up again considerably, but not (yet) to its former
bangy, strident character (this was on a 6-foot Kawai).
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I feel that Yamaha hammers are "weird" and don't behave like most
others.  As the strike point wears, they seem to pull apart at the crown
and "cauliflower", if you will.  Then when you file and reshape them,
they pull apart even more, sort of re-creating the flat spot on top you
were trying to get rid of.  Needle voicing aggravates the situation,
since it breaks up the felt and makes it spread out even more at the
crown. Yet the felt in the treble and high treble is so dense you can't
get a needle into it.  It's very frustrating and some owners are
disappointed at the relatively short time it takes for the hammers to
get flat on top, even if no filing or voicing has been done since it
left the factory.  Kawai is similar if I remember right, but I haven't
done as many, or at least none recently.  Is there some special way of
filing/voicing these hammers?
    Thanks to all for comments, help.  Dave Nereson, RPT, Denver
dnereson@dim.com