Restoration of a player piano that is also an orchestrian for the Dahl family of McKinney Texas
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1) This is a picture of the piano partially torn down but totally
unrestored.
2) Here you can see the inside of the pump as it is being restored. You can
see in the upper right where a vacuum gauge is attached to the pump to set the vacuum
level at the spill valve. The spill valve opens at a certain pressure to
intentionally leak air into the pump. This prevents the pump from stalling and
burning up the motor during rewind.
3) This is the spool box and pneumatic stack before restoration began. The
original spool box had been removed so that a larger box that can play long playing
orchestrian "O" rolls could be installed. All of the pneumatic components
of the spool box (top portion in the picture) had recently been remade. All of the
work had been done so badly that it necessitated the complete dismantling and remaking of
the spool box, transmission and play/rewind components.
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4) Here you can see two of the three tiers of pneumatics and valves after they had
been taken off the main trunk but before restoration began. These, too, appeared to
have been recently restored. However, the job had been so badly done that all the
practically new cloth on the pneumatics was coming off.
5) This is a picture of two of the tiers after the assembly had been opened up.
This type of player mechanism uses heavy rubberized cloth to seal the valve
chambers from the outside air instead of wood as is done in most designs. The seal
cloth has been removed and the top valve plates taken off to expose the valves, lifter
buttons and pouches. I was sickened to see what was inside. The person that
had "restored" this unit before had, instead of replacing the leather gaskets as
should have been done, simply glommed shellac all over the leather. It made removal
of the valve plates very difficult. In this picture, you can see the outside valve
plates upside down and to the right on the bench. At this point, the metal valve
seats had been removed from the wood, cleaned and polished since they were slightly
corroded and contaminated with the shellac that was poured all over everything.
These plates were then treated to a smooth sprayed on coat of lacquer to seal the metal
against future corrosion. Then the seats were pressed back into the wood with a
little sealant to make sure they were snug and air tight.
6) The next thing to do was to take the valve chambers the rest of the way apart and
restore them. In this picture, you can see one of the pouch boards being cleaned up
on the drum sanding planer. All the mating surfaces and rubber cloth glue joint
surfaces were also cleaned and squared up on this device. It was particularly
important to use this machine to true up the gluing surfaces since the previous restorer
had badly damaged the shape and squareness of these joints.
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7) In this picture, you can see two of the three pouch boards. The one on the
right shows the pouch wells and how they have been thoroughly resealed. The board on
the left shows the new pouches that have been shaped and fitted to the lifter stems
sitting in their repective wells but not glued down yet. In this type of player
mechanism, the valve lifter stems (the light wooden parts that look a bit like an upside
down mushroom) are actually glued to the pouches. In most players, the lifter is
only a small button and it simply rests on the pouch rather than being glued to it.
Tiny holes in these lifter stems (called bleeds) have to be carefully aligned to the
exact center of the pouch and then the pouch must be glued carefully to the exact center
of the pouch well so that the tiny bleed holes will work properly. Also, this is
important because these wooden pouch lifters are connected directly to the valves
themselves. If everything isn't aligned exactly, the valves will be cocked off to
one side and will not seal or even be able to move back and forth.
8) Here, you can see that the pouches have now been glued into the pouch wells with
the help of a special guiding tool. They are now exactly correct to enable
everything to work properly. You can see, in this picture, that some of the wells do
not contain pouches. This is because "O" rolls only play 66 notes.
Sometimes the bottom octave on "O" roll orchestrians is coupled with the next
octave down on the piano. This enables the piano to play on 78 notes with the bottom
two octaves playing together in unison. This makes the tone more full and also makes
the overall piano louder. Since this unit is intended for a person's home rather
than a large meeting hall, it was decided to be best to leave it at the usual 66
notes. The pneumatic stack in this piano was originally just a standard 88 note
pumper player. Therefore, the stack was set up for 88 notes. The notes that
aren't needed are being left out to prevent potential leaks that would develop over time
as parts aged. If they aren't going to play, there is no point in having them
sitting in the piano as potential leaks. Sadly, the person who converted this piano
to an orchestrian only included 57 actual playing notes. In addition, this person
placed these notes in the wrong spots to coincide with the signals from the roll.
Therefore, an additional 9 pneumatics had to be made for the piano and the entire
pneumatic and valve layout had to be changed to make it play correctly. You can also
see, on the left, that the gaskets that had been previously glopped up with shellac have
been replaced with new leather gaskets. You can also see that the valves are sitting
(on the left again) inside their wells with their new leathers in place.
9) This picture was actually taken before the pouches and lifter stems (shown above)
were glued up. Here, you can see the valves (sitting with their corresponding lifter
stems) being releathered. When this piano was restored before and converted to an
orchestrian these valves must have been in need of new leather. However, the
leathers were not changed. It would surprise me very much if the piano played at all
with the way these valves looked. However, with their new leather, they now seal as
well as the day the piano was new.
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10) This picture shows some of the pneumatic boards right after they were removed
from the tiers shown in #4 above.
11) The previous restorer had sanded
so aggressively on these pneumatic boards that there was simply nothing left of
them. As a result, many of them disintegrated while they were being removed.
There just wasn't anything left of them. It was, therefore, unwise to attempt to
reuse many of these boards. New poplar pneumatic boards were manufactured in this
shop, some of which you can see on the right in this picture. In addition, 9
entirely new pneumatics had to be made (a total of 18 new boards for these 9 notes) in
order to bring the note count up to the correct number for the "O" roll.
In the end, about 1/3 of all the pneumatic boards had to be replaced.
12) Sometimes, it is possible to save the cloth hinges that are inside of player
piano pneumatics. However, most of these hinges were not glued down properly so they
had to be replaced. Here, you can see new hinges being glued onto the pneumatics.
Notice that all gluing is done with hot hide glue. This is the only glue to
use since it is the most easily reversed and yet very strong. This will make future
restoration very easy. Sadly, much of the gluing done by the previous restorer was
not done with hide glue.
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13) This shows some of the new pneumatics (the ones that were made to bring the note
count up to the correct number) after they had received their new hinges.
14) This shows part of the process of installing new pneumatic cloth. This
time, the cloth to wood glue joint will last because the wood was properly prepared before
gluing. The reason the cloth came lose from the previous attempt was because the
wood had not been properly prepared before new cloth was installed. Note that the
hinge ends in this picture have not been glued down. The front and sides need to dry
somewhat before the hinges are done. After the glue is ready, the pneumatics are
folded into their proper "closed" position before the hinge ends are glued down.
This ensures that the cloth will not interfere with the opening and closing of the
pneumatic. In addition, red felt "bumpers" were glued inside the
pneumatics. You can see one in this picture on the pneumatic that is on its side
receiving new cloth. These bumpers (not originally used) prevent the pneumatic from
ever closing 100%. In this way, the pneumatic cloth is never sandwiched hard
between the boards. If the cloth does get pinched hard between the boards, it takes
on a hard crease which shortens the life of the cloth.
15) Here, you see the accordion and the pneumatic stack that plays it before any
restoration work began.
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16) Another angle.
17) In normal use, an accordion is not designed to be completely air tight. An
accordion makes sound on both vacuum and pressure depending on whether it is being drawn
or squeezed. Therefore, the valves that operate the notes, are only covered in felt.
This felt leaks a certain amount of air on purpose so that the "feel" of
the keys won't vary from the moments of suction and then pressure. However, air is
at quite a premium in a player piano. An accordion can not be allowed to waste air
like this. If it did, then years from now, when this restoration is getting older,
the leakage coming from the accordion will become the cause of the piano failing to play
due to all the leakage from it. As the restoration gets older, leaks will slowly
start to develop as a normal result of the aging process. It was decided, therefore,
to replace the felt valve facings (which were shot anyways) with leather. Also, the
bellows of the accordion were sent out to be completely recovered since they were worn out
and full of holes. When the accordion is put together again, it will be much more
air tight than would be desirable for traditional use but will be perfect for use in an
orchestrian. Sadly, even here the previous restorer messed things up. It is
usual to hinge and spring load accordions in orchestrians. By doing this, the action
of the air on the accordion, when it is playing, is such that the bellows can be seen
physically moving as if someone were really playing it. However, the previous
restorer placed the spring on this accordion as if the instrument were going to be
supplied with pressurized air. Then they proceeded to build the piano with only a
supply of vacuum air. Therefore, the spring did nothing. This will, during
this restoration, be replaced with a different kind of spring assembly so that the
accordion will really move as intended.
18) Here you can see the new valve leathers through the holes in the valve board
looking from the inside of the accordion.
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19) After, checking that none of the components in the
reed boxes were going to lead to any problems and reattaching those that had fallen out
over the years and checking the rest to see that they were firmly in place, the reed boxes
were replaced into the accordion. The valves on this model of accordion were
attached to their connecting rods with just a blob of wax (some of which had already come
apart.) This will never do in an orchestrian so, upon restoration, they were
attached with epoxy. This will present no problems with future restorations since it
is equally easy to reface the valves whether they are attached to the connecting arms or
not. With the extra heavy duty use these valves will receive in this application, it
was important to ensure that they were as reliable as possible.
20) This picture is somewhat out of order. This shows two of the tier boards
after restoration was complete. They are now ready for new seal cloth. You can
see how the pouches and lifter stems at the bottom of each tier must align directly with
the parts located in the upper boards of each tier where the valves are.
