speaking of front rail bushings

[Tony Caught]

Willem, Conrad and List,

Conrad said "I believe Tony's tongue was interfacing with his cheek.  ..."

Actually it's foot in mouth.


My problem is that I have not got an old piano with an ivory keyboard on to
compare what I am talking about here that I can measure. Maybe someone on
the list could do this for me.

The height of the modern sharp is aprox 11mm at the back and 14mm at the
front. I am not sure what the height is of the older sharp (that is the one
used with the ivory keyboard) but it must be thinner.

On all keyboards, the key wood base is flat under the key tops (natural and
sharps) and when keyboards were made with ivory, (which is thin) the sharp
made from ebony had a height that allowed the sharp to be 1/2" or 12mm above
the ivory key top.

With the thicker plastic keytop used today, to maintain the same 1/2" or
12mm above the ivory key top, the sharp must be made thicker by the same
amount as the difference between the two types of tops.

Logic would say that to keep all things equal if you replace the ivories
with thicker keytops then you could also replace the sharps with the
"matching" thicker parts.

Yes I also route the keytops down to allow for thicker keytops, but on the
newer pianos when you are replacing thick keytops with thick keytops it is
not required.


Regards

Tony Caught
caute@optusnet.com.au

----- Original Message -----
From: "Conrad Hoffsommer" <hoffsoco@luther.edu>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Saturday, September 07, 2002 12:42 AM
Subject: Re: speaking of front rail bushings


> Willem,
>
> At 10:41 9/6/2002 -0400, you wrote:
> >In a message dated 9/5/02 10:54:16 PM Central Daylight Time,
> >caute@optusnet.com.au writes:
> >>A fourth answer is to replace the sharps with thicker tops.
> >>Tony Caught
> >I don't understand how that would solve my problem.
> >Wim
>
>
> I believe Tony's tongue was interfacing with his cheek.  ...
>
>
>
>
> Conrad Hoffsommer PTG RPT, MPT, CCT
>
> Certified Calibration Technician (CCT) for Bio-powered Digitally Activated
> Lever Action Tone Generation Systems
>