CAUT

Specs for Damper Lever Springs in a 1907 Stwy O

  • 1.  Specs for Damper Lever Springs in a 1907 Stwy O

    Registered Piano Technician
    Posted 12-13-2019 13:09
    The damper levers on my home piano return with too much force, adding to the force required for pedaling. I've never measured damper return springs (and intend to use either the Bolduc DW balance beam or one of my P.K. Neuse spring gauges). But there's always a first time.

    The question is more like: what's the lowest that spring pressure can get before promptness suffers. And that depends on wire size and speaking length, and if a figure could be developed for the bottom and top notes of each damper felt configuration, there should be a straight-line taper between these two. Developing a figure for any of these guideline notes would mean muting out all other notes (backrail-felt-on-iron bar) and doing a lot of in&out at different increments of spring pressure. So that's why I like to start with someone else's work <g>.

    It's well understood that this is one of many details in the damper and trap work system. (In the immortal line from the movie "Body Heat", discussing arson: ""There are fifty ways to screw up on this job. If you can think of twenty of them, you're a genius......and you aint no genius". This is the only one I know nothing on.

    TIA</g>

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    William Ballard RPT
    WBPS
    Saxtons River VT
    802-869-9107

    "Our lives contain a thousand springs
    and dies if one be gone
    Strange that a harp of a thousand strings
    should keep in tune so long."
    ...........Dr. Watts, "The Continental Harmony,1774
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