Steinway V hammers

[Bill Ballard]

At 9:51 AM -0400 4/26/04, A440A@aol.com wrote:
>Steinway suggested 4:1 for a long time, but I remember Ron Connors saying
>3:1 was now in use.   Be aware that the thinner mix goes into the hammer
>deeper and spreads out more, so it doesn't get the same effect. 
>This doping takes
>some experience, and going a little conservative is probably easier to recover
>from than the opposite.

I remember Frank Hansen (well-known piano tech in the NE for the last 
sixty years) saying that as far as reinforcing hammers, you really 
only had one pass to get it right. Shoulder or crown, you really 
wanted the hardness on the inside instead of the outer layers. After 
the initial pass, further waves of reinforcing wouldn't flow through 
the felt mass as easily, and thus not as far.

So you judged the initial doping based on the sound (and feel) of the 
hammers, and how a limited set of samples (say, 1, 20, 40, 64 and 88) 
would respond to a given strength of lacquer. The more passes you 
have to make, the more the permeability of the felt becomes a factor 
in where the reinforcer ends up or whether it does you any good.

Kind of like solid tuning where you want to land it spot on with the 
least amount of wire movement.

Bill Ballard RPT
NH Chapter, P.T.G.

"Can you check out this middle C?. It "whangs' - (or twangs?)
     Thanks so much, Ginger"
     ...........Service Request
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