[pianotech] Wegman Grand

[John Delacour]

On Thu May 6 George F Emerson wrote:

>The only Wegman I have seen was an upright.  It has no pinblock, per se.
>There is a chunk of wood where the pinblock should be.  It is a structural
>member of the back, but it is not functionally a pinblock.  The tuning pins
>do not penetrate it and are not imbedded in it.  The tuning pin look like a
>traditional tuning pin with the threaded part of its length cut off.  The
>pins are held in place by friction with the plate itself.  The plate holes,
>to engage the pins, are an inverted teardrop shape...

There was a maker in Portsmouth, England, named Papps, the inventor 
of the Papps Wedge, who used a similar system.  It would be 
interesting to know who actually was first to use the principle. 
Although his pianos (all uprights) are not, I think, anything 
remarkable otherwise, I am waiting to get one cheap and local in 
order to look at it carefully.

The Papps has a double cast-in wrestplate.  The two plates are about 
an inch apart with air in between and the back plate is bored round 
and the front plate egg-shaped.  The pins are like ordinary pins but 
smooth, without threading or filing.  As the (right-handed) tuner 
lifts the lever the pin is released from the friction at the bottom 
of the oval hole and when the lever is released it is again gripped. 
I have spoken to several tuners locally who are famiiar with these 
pianos and all of them say it is a reliable system.

In principle it seems to me a brilliant idea and I have seriously 
thought of incorporating it in a new grand.  The plate would, I 
think, need to be of cast iron and not of steel, owing to the 
friction-welding problem, and I have not investigated the options for 
making the oval holes, but I'm sure it's not beyond the wit of man. 
The frame pattern would also need some thought.

JD