Why make your own capping material instead of buying it?

[Delwin D Fandrich]

----- Original Message -----
From: "gordon stelter" <lclgcnp@yahoo.com>
To: "Pianotech" <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: February 16, 2003 7:02 AM
Subject: Re: Why make your own capping material instead of buying it?


>      What truly amazes me, though, are all the mid-
> 19th century pianos I have seen with REALLY NARROW
> bridges (like an inch!) and not a crack on 'em! No
> visible caps. No obvious laminations.
>      How'd dey do dat?
>      Del?
>

Several things come to mind.

First, scale tensions were generally some lower than they are now. This
would mean lower side forces on the pins.

Second, the width of the bridge doesn't have much to do with the stresses
involved, nor does the span of the bridge pins--what are the string
deflection angles on those bridges?

Third, piano makers throughout the 19th century would have had a better
selection of wood to choose from. Though we were well on the way, we had not
yet stripped our forests bare of the best and strongest trees. Forests were
still large enough that loggers could, and did, cream them for just the best
trees. Leaving, of course, only the weaker trees to propogate for future.
And, as we are now finding, wood coming from plantation-grown trees is often
not the structural equal of wood coming from an old-growth and/or diverse
forest. By the early part of the 20th century piano makers were already
concerned with the present and coming shortages of several species of wood
essential to their business, maple included. The idea of, perhaps, planting
a few trees to offset future shortages was just beginning to occur to them
but no one seems to have been taking it very seriously--that was the
governments job, after all. Besides, there were forests in Central and South
America they had only begun to exploit.

Del