Here is the post with photos that Will has been trying to send, edited to fit here: From: "Will Truitt" <surfdog at metrocast.net> Date: September 10, 2008 7:35:38 PM CDT To: "'Pianotech List'" <pianotech at ptg.org> Subject: Pictures of my hammer tapering jig Hello all: For those of you who have been participating in the ongoing discussion about tapering hammers that have already been hung on their shanks, I am enclosing pictures of the jig I made several years ago when I needed to taper a couple of sets of hammers where these operations had been ignored. In the interest of full disclosure, I must confess that I didn’t like everything about the jig – the hold down device was too flimsy and flexible. So yesterday I made a quick redesign, beefing it up and changing a couple of things. I modified only the one jig, but you will need to make two, each to taper one side of the hammer, and will be a mirror image of each other. Not shown on the bottom is the runner that fits in the slot on your table saw. You should be able to see enough to get the idea. You will see that my jig is adjustable for both width of cut and angle of cut – don’ try to make jigs where these values are fixed . When you have got the angle and depth dialed in, you can walk the jig over to the drill press, drill a hole through the turntable into the cross slide, and then into but not through the base. Stick a balance rail pin into the hole, and you will have an index for a preset that you can go back to quickly for a particular make of hammer. This is important, because setting things up involves a lot of trial and error and time (if anybody knows a quick way to do this part of it, I’d like to know!) This jig can be used for both hung and unhung hammers. I have 2 sets of jigs, as I had built jigs for tapering unhung hammers long ago. This is a top view. The jig consists of three basic levels: the base, which has a routed slot where the second level, the cross slide sits and can be adjusted towards or away from the saw blade by the adjustment screw at the end with an allen wrench, A machine bolt is counter sunk up through the bass, and goes through the slot in the cross slide, and locked in place with a wing nut. On top of that sits the third level, what I call the turntable. That is held in place and adjusted in the same manner as the cross slide, except that the turntable pivots around its bolt, and adjusts the angle of the taper. Here is the view from the side which faces the saw blade. I have used a half inch bolt recessed into the hold down. The hold down pivots around the bolt. The hold down arm is made of Delignit bridge stock. You will want to shape it where it contacts the hammers, so as to have adequate bearing surface no matter what the shape of the hammer is. Line the inside with some coarse sandpaper or roughen it sufficiently with a checkering file or such so that you have a stronger frictional contact. Ignore the wood blocks seen under the jig, I used them to prop up the jig on its side to photograph it, and the runner for the slot in the table saw table is not attached at the time of the photo. If you are concerned that such an arrangement will not hold the hammer down with enough pressure, know that I can bear down hard enough on the hammer head that I could pull on the shank and snap it I wanted to. Plus the pressure of the blade will push the tail against the back stop, and rest of it into the sidewall. Shown is how my hand will be positioned as I am holding down the hammer to trim it. I must confess to being an hacker and a dubber when it comes to photography at present. I used a free image editing software package called Picasa 3 to crop, boost contrast, sharpness, and a few other things to make it look like I know what I am doing - I don’t, but I sure can fake it. Very easy to use, too. It allowed me to add the text to the photo above, and I simply copied and pasted from Picasa into MS Outlook for this e-mail message. Please feel free to ask any questions you may have. I hope this can be of value to some of you. Respectfully, Will Truitt -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20080912/ff822cb7/attachment-0001.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: attachment-0001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 39500 bytes Desc: not available Url : https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20080912/ff822cb7/attachment-0003.jpg -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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