reducing hammer weight

[William Monroe]

Hi Nick and others,

Silly busy these few days.  I'll try and get more info posted tomorrow 
afternoon.  Very busy.

William R. Monroe



> Hi William,
>
> Although you haven't stated it explicitly, I am guessing that your reason
> for reducing hammer weight is to change touchweight (to lesson the
> downweight from, say, 58 grams to something like 50 or 52). Is that so?
>
> Perhaps you could supply us with a bit more information. For example:
>
> 1) Any idea what your action ratio is? For example, if it is 5 to 1, then
> you would need to remove 1 gram from the hammer in order to reduce the
> downweight by 5 grams, which ties in to JD's (see below) very useful 
> rundown
> of the math.
>
> 2) Can we assume that friction is not an issue?
>
> It may be that there are other ways, perhaps in addition to standard 
> hammer
> weight prepping (i.e., side tapering, tailing and coving) that require
> attention in order to "fix" the touchweight.
>
> Drilling holes in hammer moldings in order to insert weights is an 
> entirely
> different thing than drilling to lower weight/mass. However, drilling 
> holes
> in order to adjust tone, e.g., to tone down the "woody effect" of treble
> hammers is something else and at times has merit.
>
> In addition, our statically determined weight adjustments, i.e., the usual
> downweight/upweight gram tests, is one thing; but the dynamic result of a
> hammer of either more weight or less weight flying toward the strings at
> high velocity is something else again. The dynamic inertial values are a
> function of the static, but are of significantly higher magnitude.
>
> Regards,
>
> Nick Gravagne, RPT