Role of the Staple on a hammer

[Barbara Richmond]

Hi David, 



I've taken staples out--only because other people told me I could...and well, I believed them.  :-)   At the CERS this fall, Wally Brooks told a fellow that the integrity of the hammers was destroyed (can't remember his exact words, but he got pretty excited about it) when folks remove staples to control hammer weight.   I figure Wally probably knows something about hammers... 



Anyway, I'd be interested if anyone had ever had a hammer spring open (some time, sooner or later) after removing the staple.  Guess I'll be crossing my fingers about those staples I've removed in the past--though I think most of them had a bunch of lacquer holding them together.  



Barbara Richmond, RPT 

near Peoria, IL 





----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Love" <davidlovepianos at comcast.net> 
To: "Pianotech List" <pianotech at ptg.org> 
Sent: Monday, October 27, 2008 9:50:40 PM GMT -06:00 US/Canada Central 
Subject: Role of the Staple on a hammer 

An older subject but I've been meaning to comment on this.  A few things 
have been written about whether the staple is necessary to secure the glue 
joint on a hammer.  While I do agree that the glue does most (if not all) of 
the work holding the felt to the molding, I think the staple does play a 
role in maintaining the overall tension in the felt.  Hammers without 
staples must resort to reinforcers (which I have done on occasion) or some 
application of heat to stabilize this region.  I think the use of heat to 
create stability has a potential downside in that too much will simply 
remove tension from the felt rather than reinforce this area in any 
particular way.  For that reason, I'm not yet ready to abandon the use of 
the staple. 
     
David Love 
davidlovepianos at comcast.net 
www.davidlovepianos.com 



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20081028/a3a1781f/attachment.html