Action Rail Hole Spacing

[Sarah Fox]

Hi Thump,

> Excuse me, please, but it seems that we'ere getting a
> little fanatical here. What is wrong with making a
> scale stick out of some stable stuff, like plexiglas,
> marking the hole positions by placing it against the
> current flange screw holes for the wippen, then
> marking across your new wood with a  little
> tri-square. Then just clamp a block across your drill
> press table so that the drilled holes line up with the
> centerline of your new wood and drill away?
> What would be wrong with that?

Not that I posed the original question, but...

Nothing would be wrong with that.  I suppose it's more a matter of the
precision with which one is to do the work and/or the speed of higher
precision production.  If you want to turn out beautiful action work, you
should maximize use of jigs and minimize the use of measuring sticks and
pencil marks, IMO.  Although I'm not a professional piano tech, I've done a
fair amount of machine work, and in my experience, the human eyeball and the
human hand just don't cut it.  But then again, I'm used to measuring
distances in microns (1/1000 mm), so I might be the wrong person to comment
on this.  ;-)  Still, it seems whenever I resort to pencil marks, my eye
tells me the end product could have been done more accurately.

Peace,
Sarah