Stace
Traveling and burning grand piano hammers are critical skills taught in professional piano technician training programs and we teach this skill here at The Artisan School!
As part of advanced action work after repinning and before final regulation, these techniques improve hammer alignment, consistency, and overall playability, forming a solid foundation for high-quality piano performance and long-term reliability.
Traveling focuses on ensuring that all hammer shanks move straight and evenly upward toward the strings.
- To check this, a rod or dowel is placed underneath the hammers and gently lifted while observing the spacing between them. As the hammers rise, any that shift left or right become easy to identify.
- Adjustments are made using traveling tape or thin paper placed at the flange to guide the hammer into proper alignment. The goal is to create uniform movement across the entire action so that all hammers travel in unison.
- Most technicians begin in the treble section and work their way across, addressing the most obvious issues first. It often takes more than one pass to fully dial this in, but once movement becomes difficult to detect, the alignment is typically in a good place.
Once traveling is established, the next step is burning, which is used to square the hammer heads so they strike the strings at the correct angle.
- This process involves applying controlled heat to the hammer shank, not the hammer head, and gently adjusting its position.
- By lifting each hammer toward the string and observing the spacing on either side, it becomes clear which direction the hammer needs to move.
- Heat is then applied while carefully guiding the hammer into alignment.
- *Unlike traveling, which corrects the movement of the shank, burning adjusts the angle of the hammer head itself. These are two separate processes, and understanding that distinction is key to doing the work effectively.
In practice, technicians typically perform a rough pass of traveling first, followed by a pass of burning, and then repeat both steps to refine the results. When time is limited, it is common to focus only on the most noticeable issues while still working across all sections of the piano, including the treble, tenor, and bass. The goal in these situations is not perfection, but meaningful improvement in the action’s performance.
In real-world service, traveling and burning are often included as part of larger jobs, such as repinning, rather than offered as standalone services. Burning is used far more frequently, especially when correcting hammer alignment issues, while traveling is done less often but remains an important skill to understand. The same principles apply to upright pianos, although traveling is rarely needed, while burning is commonly used to correct hammers that are misaligned or rubbing against one another.
*Care must be taken to avoid common mistakes such as confusing traveling with hammer squaring, overheating the shank or surrounding parts, leaving excess tape visible, or over-correcting adjustments. Small, precise changes are far more effective than aggressive ones.
Ultimately, traveling and burning are foundational techniques that significantly improve the precision, consistency, and playability of a piano action, especially following major repair work. These are the kinds of hands-on skills you develop when you learn to become a piano technician through professional piano technician. When done correctly, they ensure the instrument responds evenly and performs at a much higher level—one of the key outcomes of a comprehensive piano technician school education.
