The belly-man must have patterns for the position of the bridges and for the bridge-pin boring. A wooden pattern is also required for the pressure bar.
When these details are completed, the draughtsman must possess himself in patience until his completed instrument is turned out.
If the rules so carefully demonstrated throughout this treatise are fully digested, the designer will be far on the way towards correct scale draughting. His native cunning, however, must be relied upon to carry him through when written directions fail.
CHAPTER XVI.
CONCLUSION.
If the present treatise has convinced the reader that the making of pianofortes is a very serious matter, and one not to be attacked in a spirit of levity, then one of its immediate objects has been attained.
Indeed there has been an abiding fear in the breast of the author that he might presently be charged with piling on the agony too strongly and searching with excessive zeal for scientific causes and rules when the shortest solutions may be found by empirical methods. This is not really the case, however, for the whole problem of the construction of pianofortes is naturally acoustical. While it is doubtless true that many pianofortes have been and are continually made, not merely with indifference to, but in defiance of, every law that has been expounded in these pages, it nevertheless remains that none of these have been good pianofortes. Of the making of thump-boxes there is no end. Unfortunately for the public, musical ignorance is well-nigh universal, and the impostor finds it easy to palm off shoddy in place of the real article. Of course, it is quite true that bad pianofortes are soon found out, but when the inevitable discovery comes, the mischief has been done and the purchaser is, as usual, the victim. A student of the construction of good instruments cannot fail to be astonished that anyone should wish to turn out anything but the best. For, as one continues to investigate the multifarious problems that are continually suggested, the desire to overcome them and to produce perfect instruments becomes almost irresistible. Perhaps this is why the clever designer, if left to himself, often develops into a crank. And, indeed, there is not an industry on the face of the globe that has produced more cranks.
The files of the patent office are full of the ideas of unrewarded genius that has spent its time, its money and its enthusiasm in the unenviable task of producing innovations in pianofortes. No feature of construction has been left unimproved; yet how many of these inventions ever see the light? Few, indeed; and the fact is a sad commentary on the unpractical nature of genius in general.
These reflections lead one to the feeling that a fitting conclusion to a treatise on pianoforte construction may be made by giving particulars of some of the most famous and revolutionary inventions that at one time and another have been launched upon the unfeeling world of piano-making. Not all of these by any means can be denominated freaks; indeed there are the germs of most valuable developments in many of them. We shall consider a few of the really valuable ideas at least.