Here are the cases as they stand after a few days spent on them over the Christmas break (but I did take some time off with the family). I designed the outlines of all three pianos together to facilitate the development of a visual family style, while at the same time satisfying my desired design parameters for each piano.
For those of you who have been following the PTG's pianotech threads of recent months, you'll notice that I've opted for a parallel strike line for the 280. After weighing up the evidence, I've decided that (for my concert grand at least) the tapered strike will become part of disused piano making folklore. The sound board cutoffs are not finalised yet, but they're drawn close to where they'll end up. The OVERS 230 is quite a bit narrower than the OVERS-STEINBACH 225 we produce at present. Remember the list discussion on case dimension ratios? There was quite a lot of discussion on this (although I chose to lurk only for this topic). Del Fandrich posted quite a few good posts on this. The 230's outer rim remains at the same thickness (26 mm) as for the current 225 piano, but these all-Australian manufactured instruments will get southern Beech (Nothofagus moorei) for all inner and outer rim laminations, which has a Air Dry Density (ADD) of 0.74 - 0.77 gr/cc (rock maple has an ADD of 0.68 - 0.73 gr/cc).
The length of the small piano has grown somewhat since last year. Our Yamaha G2 (170 cm) 'prototype' rebuild with the floating sound board was responsible for this increase in the length of what will be our smallest grand. I have decided upon 185 cm to gain a respectable speaking length for note A1 (136 cm) while at the same time gaining a longer back scale (in excess of 12 cm). While I realise that 185 cm is not a baby grand, it is as 'baby' as I am prepared to contemplate building at this time. For those who desire a grand piano shorter than 185, there are other manufacturers who are prepared to fill that market niche.
Sorry I can't show any string scales online just yet - got to keep some of our powder dry.
Ron E. Overs
5 Jan. 2002
