Richard, as Ed and Wim describe. The action rail on many small American verticals such as Story & Clark, J&C Fischer, and a lot of the stencil pianos are made of two pieces glued together, due to the molding cuts, the width of the rail at the glue joint is a scant 5/8ths inch. They're usually compressed actions. The pedal rod is pushing upwards and the hangars convert that energy perpendicular to push the damper levers out away from the rail. That upward thrust is constantly pushing directly against (separating) the two glued parts of the action rail. If the glue joint breaks, starting at the point of most vertical thrust at the end of the treble, the upper part of the rail is pushed up and away from the lower part which is screwed to the action brackets. The dampers and hammer flanges are screwed to this upper part of the action rail so as it separates you can see the hammers rise vertically relative to the hammer rest rail.
I think that the reason this tends to happen when the mechanism goes to the right is because the lifter rod is about a foot longer as it extends up to the treble end of the action this extra length adds greatly to the torque as the rod lifts the aggregate of 65 or so damper springs extending all the way down to the other end of the piano.
Wim mentions that he has been seeing this problem since he came to Hawai'i. I didn't realize that it might be yet another phenomenon that is mostly limited to the tropics-like the expanding key leads.
Usually the glue failure will extend to about half way down the rail but when I do the repair, in addition to regluing I use screws and/or dowels to reinforce the joint all the way down to the other end as the gluing is suspect. In fact I usually can't even see any of the old glue residue on the wood at all and it's a clean break along the glue line.
If you remove the action and manually lift the dampers with the lifter rod you will immediately see if the action rail is separating.
I still run into one or two a year but as these pianos are rapidly becoming landfill the problem is getting scarce. The last one I saw a few months ago I was able to convince the owners to replace Aunt Tillie's piano. I've been having luck by suggesting that Aunt Tillie got a really nice piano back in 1952 and she never would have an old piano like this one that is coming apart at the seams and maybe now's the time to start a new chapter of family history with an equally nice piano as Tillie started out with. Although I don't get the repair job, I also don't get the headaches and I can tune their new piano without parts that break just by looking at them.
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Steven Rosenthal
Honolulu HI
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Original Message:
Sent: 11-30-2018 12:23
From: Willem Blees
Subject: vertical damper lift rod repair
Richard
As Ed said, what Steve is referring to is what I've experienced about dozen times here in Hawaii. The action rail, to which all the action parts are attached, are made from several planks edge glued together. It is not uncommon for one of those rails to be cut where the two edges are glued. When the glue joint fails due to excessive humidity, the pedal rod splits the rail.
You might want to ask the customer where the piano came from.
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Willem "Wim" Blees, RPT
Mililani, HI 96789
Original Message:
Sent: 11-30-2018 09:52
From: Richard West
Subject: vertical damper lift rod repair
Thanks, All, for the responses. Most responders' comments seemed directed at the "hinges," so I'll look at those again. They seemed okay, but maybe I missed something.
Ed, the piano does have a bass sustain, but what's happening is not, I'm sure, an intentional manufacturer feature. The top notes lift very early and then the rest lift in an arc that curves toward the tenor/bass break. The Astin-Weight is a unique design, to be sure, but this pedal system is not one of it's better design features.
Steve, your post describes the situation I'm seeing, i.e., the lift is on the right side, there's a split rod, and there's very little room for the pedal rod that comes up from the pedal lever at the bottom. The pedal rod may, in fact, be contacting the foot of the action bracket. It is very difficult to even get the pedal rod connected; there's not enough room to guide the pin into the lever at the top and working from the bottom it's hard to even see or feel where the pedal rod pin needs to go. The key bed is very close to the plate.
I'm having trouble understanding one part of your email:
The telltale sign of that problem is that the hammers go up when the pedal is depressed as the hammer flanges are attached to the part of the rail that is moving.
Can you elaborate on that? The hammer flanges are "attached," i.e., screwed to the main action rail. Are you saying the main action rail is moving? I'm confused.
Richard
Original Message------
Is it the bass or treble that lifts early?
If it's the bass, this could be intentional to allow half-pedaling.
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Ed Sutton
ed440@me.com
(980) 254-7413
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