It was another day with hide glue. After I re-polished the damper wires, I attached the damper felts to the damper heads. The felts are so pretty. Celeste and I think they look like candy, and we want to eat them.
Friday, 11 May 12
I did another leveling of the keys and glue-sized the glide bolt holes. Glide bolts lessen the friction between the key frame and the keybed, so they're really important. "Glue-size" means to saturate a hole with diluted glue for a tighter fit.
Much of the day was spent finishing and re-installing the trapwork, which I started on Sep 16th (Part II). At that time, I had replaced the felt punchings and cleaned up the wood, screws, springs, and pins. This time, I glued new leather to the levers, lubricated the springs, and used a forstner bit in the drill press to cut a hole for the sostenuto rod. I think forstner bits are beautiful.
The picture below shows the levers mounted onto the underside of the piano. The three tan shapes are thick pieces of leather that will touch the pedal rods. If you look closely, you can see that I shaped these with a sharp chisel. The most circular one on the left is for the left pedal, also known as the una corda pedal. The middle pedal is the sostenuto, and the right pedal is the damper. If you don't play the piano, there's a small lecture for you under the picture.
You should play the piano. Also, the damper (right) is the most commonly used pedal, and its job is to sustain sound by raising the dampers which otherwise stop the vibrations of the strings. The una corda (left) is the next most commonly used pedal, and it shifts the action towards the treble so that the hammers strike fewer strings. The sostenuto (middle) is similar to the damper, but sustains only selected pitches by raising selected dampers.
I "roughed in" the let-off and drop, which means I adjusted these two things in an unrefined manner. I'm not even sure they were "working" on all 88 keys. The let-off is the point in the action where the hammer no longer touches the wippen jack, and flies freely into the string. Because this should happen close to the strings, we used the metal bar shown in the picture below to approximate string height. The let-off distance is controlled by the height of the let-off buttons, which is adjusted by let-off screws. These are the metal hook-like circles protruding above the rail, and the longer tool with the clover head grabs them.
The drop, on the other hand, is the distance the hammers fall after gravity and the strings push them downwards. This is controlled by a very small drop screw on the top of the hammers, and the tiny screwdriver with the bead adjusts those. It's pretty neat.
Jack worked on my hammers!
I came into the shop both Wednesday and Friday to do cosmetic things off the clock. Mostly, I polished up the lid. Pictured below is the hinge that allows the lid to fold over. It's called the continuous hinge, and has eleven panels that hold six screws each. The screw holes are stripped out, so I have been plugging them with glue and strips of ecsaine, which is a material like leather.
I did more cosmetic things on Wednesday and Friday, like replacing belly felt, music desk felt, and fallboard felt. I don't like replacing felt because I'm no good at it. I also polished The Volkert, and doth she glisten! Nathan glistens, as well.
END PART VIII
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