Two Remedies to correct a light action

[William R. Monroe]

Oh My,

Where to begin?  As this is a list for technicians exchanging ideas and 
information regarding piano technology, I would suggest that these ideas may 
be a bit out of place.

The nail idea, valid in a way, would be (perhaps) more appropriate if there 
were a decent way to attach the nails.  Masking tape, holding nails on in 
the action is a disaster waiting.  Instead, why not use the clips, as 
suggested before, or, better yet, get some lead and add it to the hammer 
molding.

Adding felt to achieve premature engagement of the damper underlevers, 
again, valid in a way, is not really addressing the problem properly.  Now 
you have to raise the upstop rail to compensate for the added lift by the 
key.  Just gets worse.......

As far as the nail polish containers go, must I?  Please just buy a decent 
set of gram weights so you don't have to recalibrate every time you use 
them.

If you are getting paid to work on pianos, you should reasonably be expected 
to have appropriate tools and information.  If you're fiddling with your own 
piano, do whatever you want, but don't complain when you hire a technician, 
and they charge you to undo your work and then do proper work.

AND, none of these may be the proper fix for Brett's situation.  He really 
needs to do some basic diagnostics first (UW, DW, BW at least).

Best,
William R. Monroe


> Some easy to accomplish suggestions to correct a light touch.
>
> 1) An easy and quick way to increase the weight of the hammers, is to tape 
> a
> large nail with masking tape on top of the shaft, with the head almost
> touching the hammer.
> I did this on my Bluthner, and increased the weight of the hammers (as
> weighed individually with an electronic scale used for mail) from 0.3, to
> 0.4 ounces.
> A smaller nail can be used as this is quite a drastic increase.
> The resulting touch was much heavier. However this put a lot of strain on
> the repetition spring, changing the touch too much, and because of this I
> decided to undo it. The whole process can be done, and undone very 
> quickly,
> and the resulting weight increase measured accurately.
>
> 2) I elected instead to tape a piece of thin felt (from a sheet with
> adhesive backing costing .99/sheet in any crafts store), in the back of 
> each
> key, on the damper lever key cushion, (at the point where it raises the
> dampers), in a way that the dampers are lifted almost immediately as one
> presses the key, thus giving a beautiful firm touch to the action, by 
> using
> the weight of the dampers thus increasing the resistance and resulting in 
> a
> heavier touch.
>
> As far as measuring the key resistance with weights, the easiest way to do
> it, is to use a small bottle of woman's nail polish that would fit on top 
> of
> a key, after weighing it and removing or adding polish to the desired
> weight. One can prepare two or more bottles with a premeasured desired
> weight.
>
> Stephen Papastephanou