[pianotech] brass rail duplication

[Ron Nossaman]

On 9/11/2012 8:05 PM, Encore Pianos wrote:

> Finally, the 64,000 dollar question:  Would any of my dear readers find
> a tolerance of .035 acceptable, or is that value totally out to lunch?
> If you were in my shoes, where would you be finding yourself sitting?

A whole bunch of things, most of which I won't get into.

Point one: it's a junk job; old parts put back on a new rail. That's for 
perspective.

Yes, the duplication should have been more accurate, but you wouldn't 
have replaced old action parts with new and not had to have done 
extensive regulation, so that's not a crisis.

0.035" will NOT adversely affect the intersecting arcs/geometry/stars 
alignment adversely. Get real. And that pittance made the hammers hit 
the damper heads, and that's a problem?

I'd have just shimmed the rail up as necessary to get the center pin in 
a working position and gotten on with it without starting a cost 
escalation landslide that should have been addressed in the planning 
stage. It already has too much money and time involved for what it is, 
and the action parts are still 100 years old, which puts hair splitting 
and puffing up in indignation on the back burner. The compromises are 
already outlined by the job, so make it work without wasting any more 
money and time than has already been done. The bigger the deal that is 
made of this, and the more expensive it gets, the greater (justifiably) 
the customer's expectation of quality and performance, which isn't in 
the job in the first place. You've adopted an elephant with diarrhea. 
Congratulations, and good luck.
Ron N