traveling

[larudee@pacbell.net]

I guess I missed a couple of messages at the beginning of this thread, but
Pris's method (the one she used doing factory work in Germany) is as follows (to
the best of my recollection), and ideally involves no squaring/burning, although
mere mortals may find a bit necessary nonetheless.

1.  Mount the shanks without traveling them.
2.  Dry hang the hammers, roughly squaring them.
3.  Glue hang every other hammer, orienting it such that it sweeps the same
amount of space on either side during its travel between the adjacent hammers.
The hammer may have to be tilted slightly to do that if its travel is not
vertical.  What this achieves is an orientation that is perpendicular to the
axis of travel, though not necessarily vertical until traveling has been done.
4.  Repeat step 3 for the remaining dry hung hammers.
5.  Travel the hammers in the normal way by shimming the flanges.
6.  Square/burn the hammers as needed, although if the other steps have been
done perfectly, this step will be unnecessary.

When replacing old hammers and shanks, the variation would be as follows (pardon
the repetition):

1.  Mount every other shank without traveling them, leaving the remaining old
hammers and shanks in place.
2.  Glue hang the hammers, orienting them such that each sweeps the same amount
of space on either side during its travel between the adjacent hammers.  The
hammer may have to be tilted slightly to do that if its travel is not vertical.
What this achieves is an orientation that is perpendicular to the axis of
travel, though not necessarily vertical until traveling has been done.
3.  Travel the new hammers in the normal way by shimming the flanges.
4.  Square/burn the hammers as needed, although if the other steps have been
done perfectly, this step will be unnecessary.
5.  Repeat the above for replacement of the remaining old hammers.

I am of course leaving out a bunch of detail not particularly relevant to the
method, but I hope it shows the idea.  As far as I know, Pris never advocated
burning as a method of traveling, and I agree that such a method does not
compute.

Paul S. Larudee