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

Click on the thumbnails below to see the full sized image.  Then click your "back" button to return to this page.

147) 148) 149)

147)  Here you see that the pump and the expression device have been installed and the vacuum lines are beginning to be installed.
148)  Now a new shelf to hold the drums and accordion has been made and installed along with the sides of the upper deck.  The original shelf was too small and was made of cheap plywood covered with ugly brown contact paper.  The new shelf is premium birch plywood with beautiful red felt glued to the leading edge to dress it up.
149)  Here you see that the newly constructed soft pedal and damper pedal pneumatics have been installed and tubed up.  It took many hours to determine the exact position, tubing system and contact points needed to make these work reliably.  In a normal restoration, these parts would have been present already so they would only need to be screwed back into place where they were before.  Sadly, someone stole these components out of the piano before it ever reached me so new parts had to be developed.

150) 151) 152)

150)  Making the trunk board for the accordion valves.  The piece was made out of a thick piece of poplar and then sealed with lacquer to prevent leakage.  The back was covered with pneumatic cloth.
151)  The valves were gasketed with leather and attached to the trunk board using screws.  This makes them easier to remove in the future in case any service is required.
152)  The piano only came with a tambourine but no pneumatic to operate it, no valve to operate the pneumatic or any practical means with which to mount it.  It simply had a metal rod going through it which had been stuck into the deck board of the spool frame.  This would never have worked for operating the instrument.  A very solid new mounting frame was made for it out of hard maple.  This is needed to keep the tambourine and pneumatic very ridged.  This tambourine has a skin on it and is rather large.  This makes it difficult to shake in a player piano because of the size and weight of it as well as the fact that it's hard to get ahold of it with the pneumatic in such a way that it is easy to move.  That is why a very solid mounting frame was needed so that no motion of the pneumatic would be wasted.  The roll calls for a self repeating valve for the tambourine so that it can be shaken very quickly from time to time.  Because of the shear size of this tambourine it doesn't shake as fast as other smaller tambourines could have been shaken.  The consolation for that is that it is a very nice sounding instrument and makes a very pleasant addition to the music compared to other smaller and less resonant tambourines.

153) 154) 155)

153)  The original installation had the valves for the accordion mounted in front of the tuning pins with all the large bore tubes running up through the shelf into the accordion.  This made for slow and weak response in the accordion and it also made the piano nearly impossible to tune and to move.  A new system was devised for the rebuilt piano.  A series of small signal tube nipples were inset and sealed right into the shelf that houses all the percussion instruments and the accordion.  This was placed just behind the accordion so that it cannot be seen and also to keep the length of the tubing runs as short as possible.
154)  A matching set of nipples was set into a maple block that was then gasketed with leather.  The signals from the accordion valves pass through this block via the neoprene signal tubes and join into the rest of the pneumatic stack signal tubes.   All that needs to be done to the tubes when the piano needs to be tuned or moved is for 15 screws to be removed and the lower block containing the bottom half of the signal tubes drops right off the shelf.  The shelf can then be safely removed.  Another matching maple block that contains no signal tubes or nipples goes with the piano.   It is designed to be screwed under the shelf in place of the tubing manifold itself.  This protects the mating surface from damage when the shelf is removed from the piano and set aside.
155)  The various instruments that go on top of the piano are being set temporarily into place.  In a normal restoration, all that is needed is to screw the parts back into the piano where they came out.  In this job, it was necessary to custom fit each piece.  It had to be determined where each piece would fit without interfering with any other part and so that it would sound and function properly.  That may sound like a simple task but it took an entire week to get all the new parts and revamped parts just right.

156) 157) 158)

156)  Here you see the parts being temporarily set up from the front.
157)  Now that it has been determined where things will fit and function, the actual installation begins.  Here, you see the accordion signal tubes as they are attached to the nipples that are fitted into the shelf itself.
158)  Most of the fitting is done although the new valve for the tambourine has not yet been installed.  Therefore, the black tube for the suction supply to the tambourine is hanging loose in this picture.  You can see the organized maze of signal and suction tubes running to the accordion valves and the accordion itself.

159) 160) 161)

159)  The nearly completed installation from the front.  When the piano came to me it had next to no hint of previous wiring.  There certainly was nothing to light up the insides or to back light any stained glass.  All new electrical has been installed along with lovely polished brass sconces for the top and decorative bulbs for the lower portion.
160)  This shows the main wiring harness.  There were a large number of items that needed to be connected at this point.  In addition all these components needed to be able to be activated by either a switch or alternately by a quarter.  The coin-op slot and microswitch were with the piano when it came but the switch had been broken and needed to be repaired.  Even with those items in place, there was much that was needed to make the coin-op work that was not present.  It required an additional pneumatic and valve connected to a microswitch that, when signaled by the roll, would turn the piano off.  In addition, neither of these microswitches would do any good without a rather expensive item called a latching relay which the piano didn't have when it came to me.  That is a device that alternates back and forth from on to off with just a momentary electric pulse like the one generated by the quarter being dropped down the coin slot.  Also, there was no cup to catch the coins once they were dropped so one had to be made.
161)  All accordions leak.  That is part of the way they are made.  They aren't intended to be perfectly air tight.  However, in a player piano everything needs to be air tight.  When looking at the backer board of the original installation of the accordion, you can see where the original builder had installed an air way for a separate turbine motor to run the accordion. Based upon the location of this hole, I think it likely that they had placed the turbine motor in another room with a long hose or, perhaps, on the floor next to or behind the piano.  To solve this problem took two steps.  First of all, the accordion was restored as well as it could be using player piano tightness standards.  The note valves (originally covered in felt) were recovered in leather and the bellows was replaced since the original was so full of holes that it was beyond repair.  That wasn't enough, however.  The rotary pump simply did not produce enough air volume to keep up with the amount of air leaking from the accordion.  Therefore, a separate quiet running turbine motor was installed and dedicated to the accordion.  This gives the owner the added advantage of being able to switch the accordion on and off at will and also gives him a separate volume control that governs the accordion only.  In addition another valve was installed under the keybed next to the accordion controls that causes the piano to play in soft mode at all times, locking the expression device into soft mode.

162) 163) 164)

162)  Here, you see the expression device installed into the piano.  This was a real pleasure for me.  When the piano was turned on and I saw just how well this device works and what a splendid expression it lends to the music, I was very gratified since the entire design and making of this device was done by me.
163)  Here, you see that a new lock and cancel valve has been attached to the turbine motor.  It actually doesn't do anything to the turbine itself but rather opens and closes another valve in the rotary pump.  However, the turbine location was convenient.  This valve is signaled by the roll and turns the accordion on and off as the roll dictates.  As the piano plays, the accordion is under constant suction.   However, the valves that control the pneumatics that play the keys of the accordion are not under suction.  When the roll signals for the accordion to start playing, suction is supplied to the valve assembly.  This is a completely separate air supply from the accordion itself and shares its air supply with the rest of the piano.   Since the valves in the pneumatic stack (which plays the piano itself) and the valves that operate the accordion are tubed on the same set of nipples, they must also be under exactly the same suction pressure.  In fact, it took quite a lot of time and head scratching before I was able to balance the level of wind pressure in both devices so that they operated properly.  The valves that came with the piano were so bad that they would never have been able to run with the rotary pump because the air loss was so massive the pump would never have been able to keep up.  In addition, with the amount of air leaking from those valves, it would have been impossible to balance the suction pressure properly.  When the roll starts the accordion playing you can watch its bellows open and close depending on how many notes are being called for by the roll.   It actually looks as if someone is playing it.
164)  Here you see the triangle installation.  When the piano came to me, it had the triangle pneumatic with attached beater but someone had absconded with the triangle itself as well as the mounting bracket.  Therefore, a new triangle and mounting bracket had to be installed.  You can also see the wood block in this photo as well as the new lock and cancel valve that was installed to operate the soft pedal.  You will remember that the soft pedal pneumatic had also been stolen before the piano made it to me.  (If they had ever been present to begin with.)  Because the roll often calls for the soft pedal to be depressed for long periods a locking valve has to be installed.  Otherwise, the roll would need to contain extremely long lines of perforations over the soft pedal hole to keep the pedal activated.  Doing that to the roll would greatly weaken the paper so a lock and cancel valve is used instead.   Since no valve was present originally, a new one had to be installed.

165) 166)

165)  Here, you see the doors being fitted to the front of the piano.  The way the piano was made to begin with would have almost certainly made it impossible for the roll to work properly.  There was no clearance between the devices that operate the roll and the doors.  Therefore, the play and rewind features were jamming against the doors.  Shims along the side of the doors had to be made, stained, lacquered and attached in order to bring the doors out enough to make room for the player to operate properly.  In addition to moving the doors out, I also had to relocate the placement of the mounting pin holes that keep the door assembly in place at the bottom as well as the pins that hold it at the top.  In addition, the coin op had to be relocated onto the door assembly itself otherwise the coins would get stuck because the part that was attached to the doors and the other half in the piano no longer aligned properly.   This necessitated the wiring to be changed a bit as well so that quick disconnects were available to detach the coin mechanism from the innards of the piano so the doors could be removed without ripping the electrical apart.
166)  Here is the finished assembly from the back showing, beautifully, the new sound board.  All that remains is to install the last bits of cabinetry to complete the piano.  Up to this point the piano has been played for about 20 hours.  During which time all the little problems and kinks were being worked out.  At this point the entire mechanism is working as well as this mechanism possibly can.

167) 168)

167-168)  The cabinet has been totally reassembled.  The piano continues to be played for hours every day while it is in the shop.  This will help the strings to settle in and for the tone to "bloom" and helps for any problems with the mechanism and/or the piano itself to crop up while the piano is still in the shop.   Before it goes back home, it will have played for many, many hours without need of a single change or adjustment.  This ensures that the piano will perform reliably for the owners once it is back home.

169) 170) 171)

169) Here you can see the new stained glass being made for this piano.  The previous owner had apparently taken the glass out before selling the piano.  Therefore, a new pattern had to be designed and built.  In this picture, the paper pattern that will be the guide for the first window has been positioned on the board.  Above it you see an exact duplicate of this pattern.  The duplicate will be cut out using special scissors that remove a sliver of paper along each line to leave room for the lead.  These cut outs will be used in cutting the actual pieces of glass.
170)  As each piece of glass is cut it is fitted to the pattern, fitted with lead came and then the assembly is temporarily nailed to the board.  After all the glass and lead is in place, the lead joints are soldered together.  Care is taken to make each joint where the lead pieces meet as tight as possible; right down to mitering each cut and sometimes shaping the center divider of the lead came to make room for tight fits.   After the soldering is completed the edges of the lead is pressed into the glass along the back side of the window to ensure that the glass doesn't rattle when the piano plays.
171)  The first window has been completed and then fitted to its corresponding door.   Care was taken to ensure that the finished window fits the wood frame perfectly.   The fit is so close that there is no room in the joint for the window to slide around or vibrate.  You can see in this photo that preparations are underway to record this piano as well.  You can see a microphone on its boom stand in position in front of the piano.

172) 173) 174)

172)  The next window is being assembled.
173)  The windows are complete.
174)  The piano has finally been completed.  This is the fully assembled piano as it looked in the shop.

175)

175)  The piano comes home.  The owner poses with his newly delivered masterpiece.