Board re-crowning

[gordon stelter]

Wonderful! Now please share your board re-crowning
technique with the rest of humanity, for music's sake.
    Cheers!
    Thump


--- "D.L. Bullock" <dlbullock@att.net> wrote:
> The tubby sound is not likely the hammers.  They
> have been on there long
> enough to be hard from oxidizing wool if not use. 
> The tubby you hear is
> several things that happen in almost all older
> uprights.  I should know --we
> restore the "tub" right out of these same pianos.
> 
> First, the bass bridge has two or three glue joints
> that are loose.  If you
> play notes going down the scale and you notice a
> decrease in volume when you
> change from the lowest tenor note on the long bridge
> to the topmost wound
> string on the bass bridge, it indicates that the
> bass bridge is loose from
> the apron or the apron is loose from the soundboard.
>  The repair is to
> remove strings at the hitch pin end and clean off
> the old glue, reglue and
> screw it back together at each glue joint.
> 
> Bass strings may be dead. If you notice they do not
> ring but a few seconds
> the copper patina has filled the interior vacancies
> as the copper winds
> around the steel core and the strings are far too
> stiff to vibrate well.  If
> you take a really dead bass string loose and hold it
> at about a 45 degree
> angle to the ground you will notice it goes straight
> up and is stiff as a
> yardstick.  A new string or one that is not dead
> held the same way will arc
> towards the ground from the weight of the string
> itself.  This can be
> improved by tying a loop in the wound part of the
> string, making a loop
> about 3-4 inches diameter, then pull the loop from
> end to end of the
> windings several times with the end of your tuning
> hammer or a screwdriver.
> Make sure you do not pull the loop off the end of
> the windings on to the
> single core wire or the center core wire will bend
> sharply and often break.
> How do you think I know that?
> 
> Also if the piano has lost enough crown it will also
> ring a short time and
> sound tubby.  The sound I notice makes the lowest
> tenor notes on the long
> bridge especially sound more like banging on metal
> sewer pipes than strings.
> This indicates to me that the board needs to be
> recrowned which is what we
> do with every piano we restore.
> 
> D.L. Bullock    St. Louis
> www.thepianoworld.com
> Piano World
> 
>  2732 Cherokee
> 
> Saint Louis MO 63118
> 
> 314-772-6676
> 
>   -----Original Message-----
>   From: Alpha88x@aol.com [mailto:Alpha88x@aol.com]
>   Sent: Friday, April 23, 2004 2:06 PM
>   To: pianotech@ptg.org
>   Subject: bass hammers sound "tubby" when played
> 
> 
>   greetings,
> 
>               When the bass hammers of a particular
> turn of the century
> upright are played they sound "tubby", a very
> "round" dull sound. Would
> these hammers be a candidate for hardening solution
> or is it the strings'
> quality? I think it is the hammers because the bass
> hammers have hardly any
> grooves and show little wear.
>   Suggestions?
> 
>   Julia Gottchall,
>   Reading, PA
> 



	
		
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