Bechstein B hammer rake / more thoughts

[Richard Brekne]

Hi agin


    "The most clever comment about that came from John Delacour, who
    considered that the distance between shank center pin and hammer
    molding center was fixed by design, which makes sense in the way the
    back checks for example are also at a fixed place offering the exact
    catch angle if there is such a thing"

Been thinking a bit more about all this and have the following 
observations. I've assumed its generally accepted that the shank should 
be in horizontal position when the hammer hits the string.  If this is 
so, and if one insists that the hammer should be perpendicular to the 
string at impact as well,  it seems to me that it follows that both the 
actual hammer bore length and the distance out on the shank the hammer 
(center of molding) is given by the position of the strike line and the 
angle the string is off horizontal. Actually boils down to 8th-9th grade 
basic triangle trig. The horizontal  line out to the normal up to the 
strike point becomes the adjacent line to the angle between the string 
plane and the horizontal, and the line parallel to the string plane out 
to this same normal becomes the hypotenuse. The rest is then given.

If one on the other hand accepts the design parameter the factory gives 
for hammer shank center to center molding distance and insist on a 
hammer to string perpendicular relationship, then one accepts the 
eventuality that the shank could be off horizontal.... perhaps 
significantly sometimes at impact.  Bob Hohf's article on action 
elevations comes to mind when it comes to the desirability of a 
horizontal shank at impact. 

Does anyone have any comments about just how horizontal the shank should 
be at impact ?

Cheers
RicB