Bechstein B hammer rake / more thoughts

[Stéphane Collin]

Hi Ric.

I'm curious to read the arguments about the horizontal shank thing.  I for
now consider that in the action, the maximum power will be delivered if the
jack is in line with the knuckle core (everything else having been maximized
too, of course) but anyway this doesn't ask for the shank being horizontal
at impact.  The only thing that I see would be maximized if the shank is
horizontal at impact is the action of gravity on the hammer when it
rebounds, but intuitively I can see no gain of consequence compared to the
hammer perpendicular to the string plane and to the shank thing.

You wrote :
I'm not quite sure how you could use that trick to get an 
accurate shank parallel to string plane at impact measurement.  At least 
not one that is any more accurate then the measurement above.  One way 
or another some small degree of error seems inevitable I suppose. 
My main querrie is really this shank at horizontal bit. If I drop that 
requirement, then I'd be able to get the hammer perpendicular to both 
the string and shank at impact if the action cavity allows for it I 
susppose... or at least pretty close to it. And that would account for a 
backwards rake yes ?

Here I don't understand.  If the hammer core is perpendicular to the string
plane and perpendicular to the shank, then the shank is obviously parallel
to the string plane, not ?  and per definition, the hammer perpendicular to
the shank means that the rake is 90°, not ?  Or do we use different meanings
for the word rake ?  I don't call this a backwards rake, but rather
improperly no rake.  If the string plane angles up a little, then the shank
will be overcentering a little bit, if we agree that overcentering means
that the shank will be positively angled with the horizontal plane.  Did I
mix up things ?

Best regards.

Stéphane Collin.