In part 4 of "How to Make a Pianoforte" W. H. Davies instructs the amateur piano maker "to provide {themself} with a set of 16in. keys to match the size of key-bottom; they may be bought at from 38s. to £3, according to quality". You could choose between more than ten keyboard makers just in London around the time he was writing, as well as purchase other components from many other kinds of specialists in work for piano makers. Today a new keyboard of this description won't be so readily available or affordable, and in America it's not likely you could even scavenge keys that would work from a discarded old one.
My keyboard is for a square piano and is more complicated than the one for Mr. Davies upright. The lengths are all different and the rails are at angles, the front and back ends of the keys are offset sideways, they aren't uniformly thick and besides there being fewer of them the keys as well as the action parts they set in motion are smaller. It works the same and has the same ordinary arrangement, though, with seven white and five black keys in each octave and no breaks in the back spacing so the steps are the same as for Davies' upright, and it even has the parts needed in part 5 of his instructions.
A keyboard closer to Davies' is described in "How to Make an Organ Keyboard" by "M. W." first published in Work Illustrated in 1884.
My keyboard is for a square piano and is more complicated than the one for Mr. Davies upright. The lengths are all different and the rails are at angles, the front and back ends of the keys are offset sideways, they aren't uniformly thick and besides there being fewer of them the keys as well as the action parts they set in motion are smaller. It works the same and has the same ordinary arrangement, though, with seven white and five black keys in each octave and no breaks in the back spacing so the steps are the same as for Davies' upright, and it even has the parts needed in part 5 of his instructions.
A keyboard closer to Davies' is described in "How to Make an Organ Keyboard" by "M. W." first published in Work Illustrated in 1884.
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Signing UpStep 1: Materials: keyplank
Piano keys are wooden levers usually cut out in order like jigsaw puzzle pieces from a wide panel or keyplank.
Keyplanks are glued up to the width required out of a few boards with the grain going the long direction of the keys. The wood they're made of has to be dry, straight grained and free of knots, as well as stable with changes in humidity and relatively strong and easy to work. They're usually a light weight, soft wood with little difference between early and late wood, like soft white pine or basswood. English piano engineer Samuel Wolfenden considered pine a little too soft, and like the famous German piano manufacturer Julius Blüthner considered basswood a little too unstable, depending on where it grew. Different woods can be combined to make better advantage of their good qualities.
The keys shouldn't bend so they should be relatively thick, depending on the amount of space there is, but usually they aren't much more than 2.5cm or less than 1.5cm. Shorter keys can be made thinner, and thinner keys can also be made stiffer by increasing the height just around the fulcrum, using stiffer wood or by reducing the stuff they have to move.
Keyplanks are glued up to the width required out of a few boards with the grain going the long direction of the keys. The wood they're made of has to be dry, straight grained and free of knots, as well as stable with changes in humidity and relatively strong and easy to work. They're usually a light weight, soft wood with little difference between early and late wood, like soft white pine or basswood. English piano engineer Samuel Wolfenden considered pine a little too soft, and like the famous German piano manufacturer Julius Blüthner considered basswood a little too unstable, depending on where it grew. Different woods can be combined to make better advantage of their good qualities.
The keys shouldn't bend so they should be relatively thick, depending on the amount of space there is, but usually they aren't much more than 2.5cm or less than 1.5cm. Shorter keys can be made thinner, and thinner keys can also be made stiffer by increasing the height just around the fulcrum, using stiffer wood or by reducing the stuff they have to move.
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I don't think the touchweight measures less than you'd find at least on English or American squares before 1850 but the small, light parts make it respond quickly - the hammers themselves are a little lighter than these ones. It has a straight hammer rail but the hammer line is curved, which you can kind of see in step 16, and the hammers are drilled to match the angles of the strings but they're trimmed so they have a more trapezoidal section, which seem to be pretty common techniques to gain space and still have the right tone.