Bridge caps

[jolly roger]

>Not as far as I'm concerned. I don't advocate seating strings with tuning.
>I consider it to be abusive to the bridge. If it's absolutely imperative
>the piano be perfect, it seems only reasonable to expect the environment to
>be just as perfect so the bridge won't move in the first place. Why is it
>expected of the tuner to come up with some magic way of making years of
>climatic abuse miraculously disappear long enough to get through a
>performance, and why would the tuner do something to the long term
>detriment of the instrument to support the illusion that everything is
>under control? Sorry, count me out on that one.

Hi Ron,
            No argument with any thing you have said, How ever in the real
world, just so much time and money, and we have to work with what is put in
front of us. 
 To be clear on seating strings, very little force is used, in fact my
favored way is to tap the top of the bridge pin, invariably the pin moves
dragging the string with it.  Like you, I have seen many examples of
incorrect seating, and the resultant damage. 

>>I wonder what the change of dimension is on the pin for a 15F swing in
>>temperature. 
>>Roger
>
>Don't stop thinking now. Even an ex-engineer can take a few minutes to look
>up expansion coefficients if he really wants to know.

You mean to say I have to read one of those dusty old books, then I would
have to find my slide rule to calculate the result.  

regards Roger.