Oh, dear, first setback.

I decided to work on a section of the dampers, specifically, the seven dampers between C and F-sharp, below middle C, which are the last seven of the overstrung notes, and are bi-chords, that is, two strings to each note, and are wire. The rest of the overstrung sections are four wound bi-chords, and then twenty wound mono-chords, down to the low C. (Remember, this instrument has only 85 keys, and ends at C top and bottom.)

Well, the damper felts on there now are pretty distorted from their original shapes, after all these years. Using a protractor and graph paper, i drew a pattern for the shape of the felts. Oh, before all that, I had to measure the angle of the damper arms to the strings, which varies from 103 degrees to 110 degrees. So I made my diagrams and charts, and figured out how to cut my felts, to fit the peculiar shapes. Here are some pictures:


So, I cut my felts 1 1/8" on my little guillotine, and made the first 110 degree cuts, and after a couple discards, I had a set.



Here is a picture of the felts placed on the strings, in place, with the damper arms removed.



So I had my set of seven dampers, one of them trimmed into an irregular heptagon.








Meanwhile, I had removed the old felts from the damper arms with the simple application of hot water with a q-tip, and the glue easily dissolved, letting me peel off the fabric. Here are the clean damper arms laid out.


I let them dry out while I went to work today. Then, when I came home, I began to lay them out to reassemble them. This is when I began to realize that they were too wide, and would need to be trimmed by about a 16th of an inch on each side. But the real discovery was that the fancy bi-chord felt I was using, it got caught between the strings, and sounded them when it lifted. The original had flat felt pads, and I thought I would improve on Mr. Mathushek's design. What a Fool!
So, it's back to the design board again. Clearly every felt is going to have to be individually shaped.

Ah, well, that's what a hobby is all about!

I got a nice long straight-edge today, and a fresh bottle of glue, and some colored pipe cleaners so I can easily label strings and tuning pins and action parts and all.

But I am committed now. It is not playable any more. Work begins!