US Patent: 9,526
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| Covering pianoforte-hammers
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Patentee:
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| Rudolph Kreter (exact or similar names) - New York, NY |
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Patent Dates:
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| Granted: |
Jan. 04, 1853 |
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Jeff Joslin
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Description: |
| See also patent 6,544X, assigned to the same maker. Between 1823 and 1832 the partnership of brothers Robert & William Nunns manufactured pianofortes. The were joined by Englishman John Clark in 1833, operating Nunns, Clark & Co., until William left in 1839, when the partnership became Nunns & Clark (William briefly became a partner with Augustus Brumley in Nunns & Brumley, 1839, and then with John and Charles Fischer in Nunns & Fischer, 1843-48, then as Wm. Nunns & Co., 1848-53 and ending in bankruptcy). The Nunns & Clark partnership continued until Clark left in 1858; the business continued under the same name with Robert Nunns at the helm and the assistance of Robert junior, nephew William junior, and John Francis Nunns. This patent was considered to be quite important to the business due to its improvement in both cost and quality of the hammers."In the manufacture of pianofortes one of the most delicate, difficult and tedious parts is the covering of the hammers. Few workmen comparatively attain excellence in this department. The requisites in a good set of hammers are that they should have regular graduations of thickness, hardness and weight, the greatest hardness, least thickness and weight at the highest part of the scale or treble; and increasing from note to note with a regular and equal succession to the lowest... My invention has for its object the covering of the hammers in a connected set; the several thicknesses or coats being applied one after the other but to the whole set at once. My machine produces perfect regularity in the graduations of hardness of the hammer and this is effected by the degree of tension with which the felt is stretched over the piece of wood called the 'hammer head'..." A tapered sheet of felt is used, one edge being two to three times the thickness of the other. The hammer covers are sawn out from the sheet, each being numbered in turn and then glued to the corresponding hammer. Three layers of felt in total are applied to each hammer, the inner layers being shaped (shaved) before the next is applied. |
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