Restoration of a Baldwin grand for the Ziedonis family
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1) The piano before the restoration began.
2) Another angle of the piano before work began.
3) The strings have been removed along with the tuning pins. Now paper
patterns are being made so the string maker can make the new bass strings to exact
tolerances.
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4) The plate is now out showing the original stained and
decaying pin block.
5) Index cards are being made so that the new pin block will fit the case of the
piano perfectly. Holes are drilled through the plate and into the original block
before the plate was removed. These holes are duplicated onto these indexes.
The original pin block is what we call a "floater." It did not attach to
the body of the piano. Rather it was simply screwed to the under side of the
plate. The new block will be glued and doweled into the piano on three sides as well
as being screwed to the plate. This is the way that Steinway makes their pin
blocks. It yields a more solid tone and a more stable tuning. It is a good
deal of extra work but I would not send a piano out of my shop without fitting the pin
block in this way unless the design of the piano forbid this high level of reconstruction.
6) The piano is now gutted and ready for the stripping of the cabinet and the drying
of the sound board, etc.
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8a) 
7) Damage done to some of the cabinet parts during shipping
by the owners third party shipper are pictured here. The music desk was badly broken
as was the name board. Before these parts are stripped, the damage is repaired.
The old finish will protect the wood from any glue squeeze out. Then the
stripping and refinishing process will complete the process of making the repairs
invisible. The lid hinge screws were also all ripped out but longer screws will
probably repair this fault. If not, each of the screw holes in the lid must be
repaired individually.
8) The damper guide rails before rebushing began.
8a) This is a picture of all the damper guide rails at the same time. The
rails to this piano are the second set from them front. All the rails are scraped,
sanded, bleached and refinished before they are rebushed with extra quality bushing cloth.
Many piano makers, including Steinway, put no finish of any kind on their damper
guide rails. This causes the wood to become badly oxidized. It isn't easy to
see these rails in the finished piano, but they can be seen if you look for them. I
want any piano that leaves my shop to have everything look brand new if possible even if
it is somewhat hard to see it in the finished product.
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9) The last of the piano's cabinet has now been stripped.
You can see that the inner rim of the piano is a much darker color than the rest of
the wood. This is probably due largely to sun fading. You'll also note that
there a some places that look white as if not completely stripped. The final
operation done to the wood before staining, sealing or filling can begin is to wash the
entire piano down with lacquer thinner. This will dissolve the last of the finish
residues remaining and leave a perfect, clean surface with which to proceed from.
10) Another picture of the difference in color from the inner rim and the rest of
the piano. The transition point is covered by the music desk guide rails so it isn't
noticed. It is possible that Baldwin stained the inner rims with a different stain
that persisted better than the rest of the piano or that they stained the inner rim darker
intentionally. It will be left up to the customer whether we should stain the entire
piano to match the color of the inner rim or to take the color variance as it is
unchanged.
11) This piano had, as previously mentioned, suffered from a great deal of sun
damage. Also, the name board had been sorely treated by the movers. It was
gouged up and scratched as well as being broken. All the repairs were made and the
color blended until all the sun faded areas matched very closely to the areas which were
not sun faded. The finished color was very nice, indeed. The only way that I
was able to repair the bad scratches and gouges in the name board was to take a big chance
on sanding through the veneer. I took my chance, and sanded all the imperfections
out. Then I filled and colored the board until it matched the rest of the piano.
Some refinishers like to sand all their pianos completely like this. I feel
this is exceedingly dangerous because it is far too easy to sand right through the veneer.
The piano's cabinet is now ready for new lacquer.
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12) After drying the sound board, one short, tiny crack
showed up in the board. This picture shows how this crack has been opened up to
receive a shim.
13) Here, the shim has been fitted to perfection and is now pressed into the board
and clamped. Shims placed between the board and the posts underneath the piano
protect the sound board from the pressure of the clamps.
14) The original pin block is pictured next to the new pin block blank which has
just been cut out. The original pin blocks on all Baldwin M pianos which I have seen
have a curve in them just as pictured. This curve is made to match into a curve in
the plate. However, rather than fitting the block to this curve, Baldwin scooped out
the wood so that the block missed the curve in the plate by a mile and then they layered
extra pin block wood over the defect to hide it from view. A very poor way of going
about building a piano to say the least. Unfortunately, I forgot about this defect
in design when I began work on this block. In order to duplicate the original block,
that extra layer (or shelf) of wood that hides the defective curve must be sawed off the
original block with the band saw. Then I am able to trace the curve of the original
block onto the new delignit blank. But because I forgot that Baldwin cut corners on
this, I made the mistake of repeating their incorrect curve on the new block. So,
after the new block was well fitted to the plate, I added a piece of delignit to this
curve and epoxied it into place so that the new pin block fits the entire lip of the plate
even at this curve. This area doesn't support any screws or tuning pins but I feel
that a pin block should fit the lip of the plate over 100% of its area with no gaps and no
excuses.
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15) This picture shows, in black, the areas of the pin block
which are actually touching the lip of the plate. These blackened areas rub off the
plate when the block is placed against it and hit with a hammer to drive it into the lip.
The black areas are removed and the process repeated until I have solid contact of
the wood to the plate along the entire lip.
16) The pin block, after fitting is completed, is marked to match the plate and then
the screw holes and tuning pin holes are drilled into it. The angle of the drill
press is made to match the original angle of the tuning pins. Later, the screw holes
will be drilled as well but at a 90 degree angle.
17) Using the indexes I made earlier, the block is marked so that it can be trimmed
to just the right size so that it will fit the case perfectly. The original block
was made undersized so that it would easily fit inside the piano. The new block is
made with much more exactitude because I intend to glue and dowel it into the case like
Steinway does. Baldwin simply allowed the pin block to float in space under the
plate instead. The lines to be cut are drawn onto the block using these indexes to
show me where to place them. Follow this link to
see how the pin block is cut so that this line is perfect and ready to be glued into the
piano. The block is first cut out on the table saw leaving the line behind.
Then the block is dressed down to the line on the jointer.
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18) Because this piano has a two piece fall board, the pin
block gets in the way of opening it. Therefore, a portion of the wood was removed
from the original block to make way for the motion of the fall board. This had to be
duplicated in the new block. It means that the glue joint to the stretcher will not
be as robust as it could have been if the piano had possessed a single piece fall board as
most grand pianos do. However, it will still be far better than it was originally
because the block will be glued to the case rather than just floating in the case.
19) Tiny voids are still left in the plate lip to pin block edge joint after the
block has been fitted to the plate. These voids can easily be ignored since the
contact is excellent anyway. But in order to bring this contact up to a complete
100%, a thin layer of epoxy is placed on the surface of the pin block and then the block
is placed against the plate and clamped into position. A thin plastic wrap barrier
is used to prevent the block from becoming glued to the plate. Once the epoxy sets
up, the result is a fit to the plate that is more perfect than can be accomplished any
other way. It is only a slight improvement over the well done wood to metal fit but
it makes me feel better to know that it isn't just excellent, it is perfect. Enough
clamping pressure is used when this is done to ensure that all the original points of
contact of wood to metal remain simply wood to metal as before with no epoxy. The
epoxy is simply squeezed into the tiny low spots.
20) The capo bar has been dressed. The string marks are removed and then the
bar is polished to make tuning smooth and perfectly controllable.
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22a) 
21) Rebushing the keys.
22) Another picture after the keys had been rebushed and then fitted to the key pins
on the action frame. The front key bushings were also replaced but they can't be
seen in these pictures because they are located on the bottom sides of the keys. On
this particular set of keys, I discovered another problem that sometimes crops up.
The holes in the centers of the keys in which the key pins pass through the keys are
worn. The purpose of these holes are to prevent the keys from "shucking"
from front to back when you play. There are only two ways to repair this on old
keys. You can cut out the old wood and replace it with new and redrill it for a
tight fit or you can do what we call "glue-sizing." The latter procedure
involves laying aliphatic resin glue or hide glue onto the surface of the wood in the area
of these holes to reduce the size of the opening. After the glue has cured, you
press the keys onto the guide pins and then run them up and down, compressing the wood and
glue until the fit is correct. The problem with glue-sizing is that it can lead to
keys which squeak. The squeak can be dealt with, but on these keys there were
objections to using either the new wood or glue-sizing methods. The wood around the
holes was very dirty which would make the chances of the glue holding well slim.
Also, the condition of the wood is poor. It's structural integrity is such that it
may not hold the glue sizing anyway. The objection to putting in new wood is that
these keys are in bad enough physical condition that it isn't worth the expense associated
with laying in new wood. What I did choose to do was to steam the wood in the area
of these holes to swell it up a bit. This didn't totally correct the
"shucking" problem but it did reduce it enough that you wouldn't notice it when
you played the piano. You'd actually have to grab a key and try to make it shuck in
order to see the amount of slop that is left. Also, the new key bushings were fitted
so nicely that the finished product felt exceedingly good. These keys should serve
just fine for the next twenty to forty years with this restoration. (Depending, of
course, on how much it is played.) Then next time this instrument is due for a major
restoration project, it is my opinion that new key sticks should be made.
22a) On this round of restoration projects in the shop, I am restoring six pianos at
the same time. It is easier for me to maintain the highest quality and at the same
time produce the fastest possible production by lacquering the parts of these pianos in
groups based upon the type of part as opposed to lacquering groups of boards based upon
which piano they came out of. In this "installment" I'm spraying the legs
and pedals. After the lacquer had been layered to a total thickness of .005"
and allowed to dry enough to sand, it was sanded until all the spraying marks and grain
was sanded completely away. Then the boards were cleaned well and another mil of
lacquer was added to flow out the 220 grit sanding marks. The condition of the
surface of these parts after this final top coat of lacquer was such that they will rub
out very quickly since the surfaces are nearly flawless.
22b) 
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22b) The same again but on this "round" I am
spraying music desks, key slips and a few other similarly shaped boards.
23) Polishing the key pins so that they will offer no drag on the new key bushings.
24) Bleaching the sound board.
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