Wood Dimensional Changes, was: Grey Market

[jolly roger]

Hi Terry,
              Moisture will not shrink the leads. The pins were very loose
and noisy, just 20 plus years of hard playing, I suppose. It's an
understatement to call our winter climate dry.
When ever I replace dampers, I always do a complete service of the under
levers. It's easy with the dampers out, but hell when the piano is
assembled and in the field.
Probably some compression of the wood, when the lead was spread. The
moisture content maybe dropped pass a critical point, hence the loose lead.
But this is just a guess. 
i look at one of the rebuilds last week and all is fine and stable. FWIW.
Roger



At 07:47 AM 2/8/01 -0500, you wrote:
>"> Damper underlevers repinned. The leads became loose after the 1 yr
>period"
>
>Just curious Roger, as a followup to past posts regarding whether a hole in
>a piece of wood gets larger or smaller when wood shrinks/swells from changes
>in moisture content. I can only assume that in your case, we are looking at
>pianos the went from a humid environment to a dry environment with the
>resultant decrease in moisture content in wooden components. Pray tell, you
>mention that the leads became loose - did it appear that the hole in the
>wood enlarged, or that the leads shrank (your guess, please) - and were the
>pins loose, or too tight, in the flange and the underlever body (what do you
>call the part that is not the flange?), that was the cause for the need to
>repin?
>
>Terry Farrell