Hi Clyde, I'm not sure it's entirely cut and dried, one smooth, cut, clear answer to why you might want to support that pinblock. Yes, there is damger of delamination, especially in some of the older pinblocks. Some of them don't need any help at all to start falling down upon the action. And having a jack support underneath would help to keep it from getting any worse. And, yes, there are some stresses associated with pounding in tuning pins. Honestly and truthfully, I've been guilty of not getting out a pinblock jack if all I intended to do was tap in a pin or two with my little tack hammer. I'd be more worried about delamination than any stresses from that. But, if I were restringing and swinging that two pound sledge, you better bet I'd have out the pinblock jack. I'm sure you've seen the little gizmo that sits on a person's desk that has a half dozen or so steel balls on a string all hanging there together in a row. You've seen what happens when you swing one ball away from the end and let it come back and hit the rest. One ball from the other end flys off in the same direction. One of the things that pinblock jack does is to transfer some of that energy we're puttin' in, to a different location on the piano, namely the keybed most of the time. Something else comes to mind, and I hope I don't mess it up too bad... When you stick in that pinblock jack, you couple the pinblock / plate assembly to the keybed which in my primitive thinking would make the whole assembly more rigid and of greater mass than each of those components would be alone. Overdramatization would be trying to drive a nail into a 2 X 4 while you were just holding it in freehanded style in the air as opposed to trying to nail the same nail in the same 2 X 4 with the same hammer while it was sitting securely on a concrete floor. (Does that make any sense??) Nothing like a short easy answer! ;-) Take care, Clyde. ===== Brian Trout Grand Restorations 3090 Gause Blvd., #202 Slidell, LA 70461 985-649-2700 GrandRestorations@yahoo.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35 a year! http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/
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