Rodgers' Piano Restorations
The Best Piano Rebuilding in the Business
9091 Ox Bow Rd.   North East, PA 16428
Because  I have a great deal of work to do, I am forced to concentrate my efforts on all matters which concern the tasks before me.   Sadly, the telephone has become a constant source of interruptions to the work schedule which consist largely of people seeking free information and telemarketers.   I lose between one and two hours each day to these people when I answer the phone.   Because of this, I have been forced to shut off phone communication so that I can better serve my customers.  In addition, the email spammers have become so thick that I am getting thousands of spams per day.  They are so thick that even spam busting software cannot stop them.  The spam has flooded my email so badly that I can no longer gain access to my own email.  Even after trying a change to the email address, the spammers found us again in a very short time.  Each time I try to access my email I simply get "timed out" because of all the junk that is in the folder.   Although I would love to be able to communicate via email, I have been totally blocked from that venue by these parasites.  If you wish to communicate with me, the best method at this time is to send a letter to the address listed above.  I know this seems slow compared to other rebuilders, but it will be well worth the effort since the quality available here is of the highest order.

Restoration of a player piano that is also an orchestrian for the Dahl family of McKinney Texas

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131)  This shows the sound board all glued into the piano.
132)  Floating the plate.  The plate height is being determined here.  Some clamps are being used to "pre-compress" the board.  This will simulate the height of the bridges after the strings are in place and are pressing down on them.   In this way, it is easier to get an accurate setting for the plate height.
133)  Two maple strips are being glued to the sound board.  The bottom strip will hold the plate at the correct height at that end.  The pin block holds the plate at the top but there is a maple strip that belongs here as well.  The plate presses on this strip and thus onto the board.  This will serve to add firmness to the connection of the board at this point.  This is particularly useful in the high treble area.  The more rigidly the board is retained in this area the better the high treble will sound.

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134)  The plate is now in and ready for the stringing felts to be installed.   The board will be pre-compressed again so that any final adjustments that may be useful can be made by changing the thickness of the felt.
135)  Stringing the piano.
136)  All the treble wire is in place.  The piano has been put up on its feet again to make room for other tasks since the bass strings had not yet come in at the time this picture was taken.

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137)  The bass strings are no in place along with all the other felts that are placed on the "dead" string segments to keep these untuned segments from ringing.
138)  The closer to the floor that the various glue joints of this piano were, the worse their condition.  This is the bottom board of the piano and it shows some of the worst damage of all.  This board was made of numerous strips of wood glued together into a wider board.  All these strips were coming unglued from each other as can be seen in this photo.
139)  A new board has been made and all the hardware and screw holes duplicated on it.  The new board is made of high grade plywood with premium birch veneer.  It holds screws beautifully and will serve well in this piano for a century without going bad.

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140)  The new bottom board has been installed.  You can see in this picture that the pedals have been polished and the pedal felt has been replaced as well.
141)  This shows lacquer on one of the boards on the piano being rubbed with the rubbing machine.
142)  The keybed and the legs along with all the side boards on the bottom and on the cheeks of the keyboard area have been reinstalled.

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143)  The action and keysticks have now been installed, the damper felts have been glued into place and the action regulated.
144)  This shows the tubing on the pneumatic stack after being installed.  The tubing that was on the piano when it arrived was still almost new but new tubing was used anyway since it is sure to last a long time this way.
145)  The way the transmission on this unit was set up was backwards of most pianos.   It made it very difficult to get the spool frame to run the paper correctly.   Also, the original spool ends which hold the roll in place were missing when the piano arrived.  New spool ends had to be manufactured and fitted to the piano.   The way the electric motor runs this unit is also exceedingly unusual.  It was very hard to find a belt that would work on it.  Finally, it was discovered that a humidifier replacement belt was perfect for this purpose.  Then after much work with the play/rewind device and various experiments and many, many adjustments it finally became possible to run a roll through a complete cycle of play, rewind and play again.   Then the entire assembly was tested on the bench using the vacuum gauge pictured at the left to simulate the lowest possible pressure level that may be present in the system at any given time.  The system was tested for a couple hours on the bench like this before it was proven that it would work reliably.

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146)  Next the pneumatic stack was reinstalled into the piano.