Restoration of a Bush & Lane/Welte for Kim Davis
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1) A composite of several photos taken of the underside of the piano before the
player mechanism was removed.
2) The player mechanism has now been removed. Additional photos of the player
mechanism before and during removal are available upon request. There are too many
to be posted on line because disk space is at a premium.
3) The mechanism after it was removed from the piano. It will be stored safely
out of the shop space where it can't be damaged in any way until it comes time to rebuild
it.
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4) The pedal lyre, showing the damper pedal pneumatic.
5) The piano before the cabinet was taken apart. You can see, in this photo,
that the piano was refinished in the past. The original warm, brown walnut was
bleached and shamefully refinished in a very thin film that offered little protection.
We will refinish with a thicker, grain filled finish that replicates the original
and matches the customer's color preferences as closely as the wood will allow.
6) Another angle, showing the inside of the piano.
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7) Before the strings were removed, the piano was evaluated for tone and the sound
board and bridges analyzed. The board had a good amount of crown still built into it
and this crown even increased slightly when the strings were removed. Tone was also
quite good on this piano. Here, you see a string being cleaned so that it produced
the best possible tone for the purpose of evaluating the sound board. The board was
amplifying the tone of the bass and sustaining the treble practically as well as a brand
new board. Provided the board doesn't pick up a lot of cracks during the drying
process, I intend to recommend we proceed as planned by restoring the original board,
rather than replacing it.
8) The action has been removed from the piano. The action parts were in good
shape and of good design so that restoration of the original action will be easily done.
It should perform well and last beautifully for years. The only aspect not
originally planned was discovered the day I picked the piano up. I discovered, at
that time, that the keytops had been badly worked on and probably should be replaced.
During storage time, the rest of the glue joints that hadn't failed did so.
The action will need new plastic keytops since the originals have been too badly damaged
by previous attempts at restoration. We will have to add new keytops to the
rebuilding plan.
9) This picture shows how I measure the setting of the damper underlevers before
taking out the dampers. This measurement will help me get the dampers levers back in
their original positions when I put the piano back together.
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10) The dampers before removal.
11) This photo was taken to show the damper heads. They are an unusual shape
and quite beautiful.
12) The damper tray after it was removed.
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13) Measuring down bearing on the bridges. The bearing measurements were
acceptable before the tension on the strings was removed and the bearing level increased
properly when the tension was removed. This indicates that the board should still be
in good shape for many years to come. After the strings were removed, pounding the
board revealed a beautiful tone similar to that produced by a new board. By the next
day, the tone had died away completely as the board acclimated to having no tension on it.
This was unusual and somewhat concerning to me. If this piano were mine, I'd
probably still replace the board because of this. I do not like the fact that the
tone of the board died so badly and completely by the next day after destringing. I
still feel that all the other tests and evaluations indicate that the board is quite
reusable even though I have some concerns. If money were no object, no board of this
age should be reused because of concerns like this, but I have to be realistic and do what
I can to accommodate my customer's needs at all times.. Drying the board will
produce the final evaluation. I don't suspect this board wants to crack much, but
the tonal change may be indicating that we will see more evidence of decline during the
drying process. Time will tell... In addition, there is an indication that the
bass bridge apron should be replaced since it is cracking. This isn't a huge task
and could be accomplished at no extra charge if the board were being replaced. Even
if we keep this board, the bridge apron will not be terribly expensive to replace.
14) Getting ready to pull the plate out. You'll note that the stretcher board
is gone from the piano in this photo. The design of the piano was for a
"floating" pin block. This will be replaced with a "full fit"
block like those installed into Steinway pianos and other high end brands. This will
make for greater tuning stability and tonal response. When the piano is done, the
stretcher will no longer be simply screwed into place as a decorative cover. It will
be added to the structural integrity of the pin block/plate assembly.
15) Making paper patterns, using the index holes drilled before the plate was pulled
out. These will be used in redesigning the pin block/stretcher so that the entire
assembly will be glued and doweled together. So many measurements and notes are
taken on all my restorations before they are taken apart that the data covers an entire,
hand written, page. Such items as tonal evaluations, key weight, down bearing,
crown, plate height, and scale are recorded.
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16) The cabinet of the piano is now totally "gutted" and ready for drying
of the sound board and stripping.
17) Now its time to rebuild the player mechanism. This is the pneumatic stack
before work began. The design of this stack is the same as the Standard Pneumatic
Action used in many high end foot pump upright player pianos.
18) A shot of the stack turned upside down.
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19) There are two sets of valves to this stack. The
pouches that operate the first set (the primaries) is shown here being sealed with rubber
cement. The pouches on this unit were in perfect, perfect condition. Also, the
leather that was available at the time that these pouches were made was thinner than what
we can get today. Therefore, I didn't replace these. The originals will
operate ever so slightly better, especially at lower suction pressures, than new leather
pouches would. The time I would have spent replacing these pouches will be spent on
other tasks that most players don't need but this one did. Especially the screws.
Almost every screw hole in the stack was stripped and in need of plugging which is
not a job that normally needs to be done.
20) The leather gaskets were in decent shape but were starting to rot at the edges
so I replaced them all. This is the secondary pouch board. I resealed these
pouches and then replaced the gasket.
21) Releathering the primary valves.
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22) The nipples that bring the signal into the primary pouch
board all had to be removed and soaked in acetone to get the old rubber tubing off of
them. Then each nipple was reset into the board with a collar of burnt shellac to
seal it.
23) This is a board that hold a set of nipples that help direct the signal tubes
around the stack. The rubber tubing was so gummed up that it would not come off
these nipples. The nipples all had to be removed from the board and soaked in
acetone to get the rubber off of them.
24) Putting the primary chest back together. The clamps are to hold the board
in alignment while I get the screws started. In this instrument, the primary chest
is actually glued to the secondary pouch board. If this were turned over, you would
see something very similar to photo #20. The primary chest has also received all new
leather gaskets.
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25) This is the board that holds the bleeds for the signal
lines into the primary chest. These bleeds are what actually allow the valves to
turn off when the paper roll closes off the note. A hole has to be cut into the
leather for all 80 signal lines in this board.
26) Resetting the tubing nipples back into this same board using a collar of burnt
shellac to seal them.
27) the primary chest and secondary pouch board are now restored. While
screwing this together, I discovered that ALL the screws were stripped. I had to
pull it back apart and plug all the screw holes so that the screws would tighten enough to
hold the chest air tight and keep it that way permanently.
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28) The main suction nipples (there is one for each half of
the stack) have received new leather gaskets and then have been cleaned and then put back
onto the stack.
29) The leather on these secondary valves was all perfect except for the outside
faces on one row. Because the one row was bad, I pulled all these valves out and put
new outside faces on all of them. Then the valves were retraveled and the entire
chest and all the metal plates was resealed with shellac to make it completely air tight.
Also, while I had the valves out, I polished the inside valve seats.
30) Now the secondary valve chest has been removed from the stack and the trunks
that hold the actual note playing pneumatics are revealed.
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31) This shows the pneumatic stack from the other side after
the lifter rods that connect it to the keys themselves have been removed.
32) The three tiers have been taken apart. This is one of them. Fresh
finish has been placed on the outside surface shown here.
33) The metal lifter fingers have been removed from each individual pneumatic.
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34) The pneumatics were numbered, marked for location and
then cut open. A warm iron was placed on the boards which were glued to the trunks.
This usually allowed the pneumatics to be lifted off intact. However, a few
of the pneumatics refused to come loose and broke as I worked at removing them. The
block to the right is a poplar wood piece which already has a hole drilled in it to
correspond to the hole each pneumatic board needs. This block will be cut into
individual slices that will replace the broken pneumatic boards.
35) The top trunk board in this photo shows what the trunks look like after the
pneumatics have been removed. The bottom two boards have been cleaned up and the
index marks placed on them so that I will know exactly where to glue the pneumatics back
into place.
36) The pneumatics have been totally cleaned up and are now ready for new hinges and
rubber cloth coverings.