Hammer height conundrum on a '46 Hardman grand

[George Whitty]

Hi, Everybody:

   I was given a Hardman 5'5" grand piano by a total stranger, started
fiddling with it and am now knee-deep into cleaning, repairing and
regulating it, having a hell of a good time, I must say!  I'm following
Arthur Reblitz's chronology on the regulation, have done every step up to
"set the hammer height", where I encounter an anomaly:  he instructs the
reader to set the hammers to sit 1 3/4 inches below the strings, though adds
a caveat that the manufacturer may specify differently.  On my little piano,
which may never have been regulated since it left the factory, the hammers
are sitting something like 2 5/16" below the strings.  So I have three
questions:  first, is it really possible for the felt capstan contact to
have compressed enough that it takes 2 to 2.5 full turns of the capstan to
take up the slack and restore the distance to 1 3/4"?  Second, I seem to
have a "Steinway style action", in
which, rather than a hammer rest rail, each wippen holds its own hammer
rest.  At this time, the hammer shanks rest less than 1/8 inch above the
hammer rests, or else actually just sit on the hammer rests (I understand
that the hammer knuckle is actually supposed to support the whole thing,
sitting on the repetition lever just a fraction above the jack);  when I
raise the capstan enough to lift the hammer to 1 3/4" below the strings, the
hammer shank now sits almost 1/2" above the hammer rest.  Is this correct?
There's a picture on page 50 of the Reblitz book showing a grand piano
action that looks about like this.  Finally, is there an entirely different
spec for Hardman grands in this measurement that I should know about?
Thanks
very much to any of you who'll help an enthusiastic newcomer to the care of
the Last Great Analog Device...

George Whitty