Restoration of a Chickering grand for David Burton
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1) A picture of the piano before work began. You can
see from the side that it has been in storage a while since a good layer of dust has
collected.
2) The bulk of the cabinet parts have been removed and the hardware taken off and
labeled. The action is also out.
3) This picture doesn't do justice to the action. I am extremely please about
the condition of the action. It is very nearly in the same condition is was when
brand new. The wood is in excellent shape and will give decades of excellent service
after I've reconditioned it. This is a prime example of what to look for in an
antique piano action that has wood that is still flexible and durable. When the
color is this blond, the wood is still very healthy. Actions whose wood has turned
dark brown to brownish-black have turned brittle and are not to be trusted unless the wood
has stayed much more flexible than is usually the case in actions of that dark color.
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4) The strings are out as are the dampers and the damper
lifter tray. Paper patterns have been made for the string winder from the plate and
bridges. These will allow the string winder (Isaac Pianos) to make the strings
exactly to fit the piano; taking into consideration every slight variation that is unique
to this piano, making for a perfect fit.
5) Removing the plate.
6) The sound board still gives a good sound when pounded with the strings off.
It also shows a healthy amount of crown. However, I'm greatly concerned about
the crack situation. Before drying, an inspection of the grain leads me to suspect
that there may develop as many as 10 cracks in this board when it is dried. The
crack pictured in this photo shows how the board has cracked in a difficult spot.
The skin of the board, here, has come loose from the ribs and the stress of the strings
pulling on the bridge has pulled it up in the air and rolled the bridge. Since it
still sounds good and there is crown, this is something that I can fix. However, if
the customer can possibly afford it, I'm going to strongly recommend considering the
installation of a new sound board. The bridges themselves are in fabulous condition
and can be transferred onto a new board with only routine reconditioning.
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8a) 
7) There is a highly unique situation pictured here.
Upon inspection of the piano before rebuilding began, this heavy reinforcement bar and
corresponding bolt assembly looked like a nice strengthening design meant to
"over-build" the plate. When I got the plate out of the piano and turned
over for a better look a highly unusual situation presented itself. What we have
here is a slightly defective casting. There is a hairline crack in the lip of the
plate in this area. This piano has never been previously rebuilt and the work you
see here is absolutely factory original. What happened is that Chickering found this
slight flaw in the casting while they were building the piano. At that time, they
had three choices. 1) They could have discarded the casting. (which would have
been my choice) 2) They could have ignored the crack and built the piano with
it in place. (because of where it is, that would have been fine since the crack was
highly unlikely to cause any problems where it is) or 3) They could reinforce
the plate in the area of the crack. (which is what they opted to do.) This
"repair" is now over 80 years old and there has obviously been no change in the
condition of the crack. If I find a new crack in a piano's plate, I'm the first one
to pronounce the piano dead. However, the factory had no problem with making this
change and then selling the piano. A factory whose standards of excellence are well
praised. Since the plate has weathered 80 years with no effect on the plate, I have
no doubt it will weather another 200+ years with the same lack of effect. Since the
new pin block will be changed over from a floating block to a full fit block as in the
Steinway design, there will be even less stress placed upon this area. Add to this
the fact that the construction of this piano is exceedingly heavy. The thickness of
the rim is simply unbelievable it is so heavy. I'm extremely pleased with the design
and construction. It far exceeds what you would find in a similarly sized Steinway.
This did not effect the tuning of the piano before, either, and won't effect it in
the future. I make this long explanation here, because this is the time to identify
the work the factory did before I perform any work on it. Now we have proof that the
repair was not done to a new crack in my shop but was part of the original production of
the piano at the factory. In this way, this unique aspect of this piano will not
effect its future resale value or salability.
8) Index cards are being made so that the new pin block will fit the case of the
piano perfectly. Holes were drilled through the plate and into the original block
before the plate was removed. These holes are duplicated onto these indexes off of
the old pin block after the plate is out. 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.
8a) The damper guide rails to all the pianos currently being rebuilt were all
rebushed at the same time. The fourth set back in this picture go to this piano.
Of all the pianos currently being rebuilt, including a Steinway A and a Steinway M,
this piano had the most heavily built guide rails that also responded best to bleaching
due to the fact that they had originally been finished at the factory, thus protecting
them from oxidation. 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) Beginning the scraping of the main body of the piano.
10) The outer rim has been scraped. The piano will still be treated with
stripper after this to even out the color. However, scraping first enables me to
limit the amount of stripper I have to use on the main body of the piano. Note, the
inner rim was not scraped. The original finish was still so tough on the inner rim
that scraping was impractical.
11) Staining one of the legs. In this case, an oil stain was chosen because it
happened to be the color I had in the shop that seemed to work best with this particular
veneer. I usually prefer to use aniline dyes because they bring out the figure of
the wood in most cases. In this example, the oil stain worked very well.
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12) The main body of the piano after staining and a sealer
coat of shellac.
13) After the shellac sealer has dried, the filling process can begin. Each
board must have its grain packed with this filler, then it is allowed to dry and then is
packed again to make sure the pores are filled as completely as possible. In this
picture, you can see filler placed on one side of the music desk. This filler is
applied and then allowed to dry until it goes from a liquid to a paste. The paste is
then rubbed into the pores in a circular motion and then the excess is cleared away with a
clean rag. All this must be done working against the grain to avoid removing any
filler from the pores once it has been packed into them.
14) The sound board looks a bit messy. Since it was being replaced, I took
advantage of that fact to use it to mask the glue joint below. I did all my
stripping, staining, sealing, and filling before I started on removing the sound board.
When the board comes out, all these smears will come out with it, leaving a perfect
looking result. The sound board has had numerous dimensions measured out.
Including, height of the nose bolts and the height of the dowel stand offs. Index
holes have also been drilled through the board into the rim. These will help in
duplicating this board. All these measurements have been marked right on the board.
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15) The sound board has been removed and all the old wood
and glue has been painstakingly removed. The bridges have been removed and are
displayed here as well. They were removed in such a way that any bits of glue which
did not release caused slivers of sound board to adhere to the bottoms of the bridges
rather than causing bits of bridge to adhere to the sound board. Then all old sound
board wood and glue is removed from the bottom of the bridges in such a way that the
original glue line in retained exactly and is completely undamaged.
16) Sound boards which have "died" usually suffer from many poor glue
joints. This usually means that it will be impossible to get the board out
completely in one piece. After the board is removed, any pieces which broke off, are
very carefully reattached in order to make the duplication process easier.
Fortunately, none of the index marks were attached to any of the broken bits. With
the possibility of breakage in mind extra index holes are always drilled to ensure that
enough of them are attached to the main section to maintain accuracy in duplication.
17) The new pin block has been rough cut to match the original. For this task,
I use my largest band saw. You can see the new panel lying along side of the
original pin block.
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18) Now the new pin block has been carefully fitted to the
lip of the plate. The dark patches represent where the wood is contacting the metal
of the plate. This is a far better fit, already, than the original pin block had.
You'll note that I had to allow for the bolts that reinforce the lip in the upper
treble section. I also had to further complicate the fit by adjusting the block so
that it didn't bear on the metal connecting plate of the reinforcement bar. The pin
block sits snugly on the actual lip itself, not the reinforcer.
19) A thin layer of epoxy is placed on the wood of the block and then the block is
clamped tightly to the lip. This takes an already exceedingly good fit to the point
of perfection. The epoxy spreads itself out and causes any slight spaces between the
wood and the metal to be filled.
20) After marking the pin block, the drill press is set to the correct angle and the
tuning pins holes drilled. The screw holes are drilled later at a 90 degree angle.
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21) Using the indexes made earlier, the pin block is marked
so that the excess wood can be removed from the back edge and sides.
22) Let it never be said that I only post my triumphs on this web site and never my
mistakes... When I went to cut the excess wood off this block, I discovered, too
late, that the saw blade on my table saw had become too dull to cut delignit. The
cut that resulted was not very good. When I cleaned it up on the jointer, it went
far past the correct location. If I want to glue this block into the case like
Steinway does, I needed to repair this mistake. An extra piece of wood was cut and
jointed to correct the problem. You can see the extra piece pictured laying on the
bench next to the block in this photo. It will be glued to the block later and then
the block will be glued into the piano. With the added strength that will come from
the dowels that will be put through the glue joint, this will be a very strong pin block
despite my slight mistake. Follow this link to
see a pin block getting the edge which is to be glued to the stretcher of the piano
dressed out on the jointer. The pin block is first cut out on the table saw
leaving the line in place. Then the pin block is dressed to the line on the jointer.
At least, that is what is supposed to happen. As described above, even the
best laid plans don't always work exactly right!
23) This picture doesn't show it very well, but the capo bar has been reshaped to
get all string marks out of it. Then it is highly polished to assist in ease of
tuning.
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24) The rib stock for the new sound board is first jointed
and planed so that it is perfectly square. Then the ribs on the original sound board
are measured for width and those width measurements checked against the insets cut in the
rastin for the ribs to glue to. In the case of this piano, I found that the width of
the ribs was considerably smaller than the insets cut for them. Since the ribs on
the sound board were quite thin by any standard, I felt it a good idea to make them a few
thousandths wider than original so that they would fit in the rastin very tightly rather
than fitting sloppily like they did originally. Also, care is taken to make sure the
ends of the ribs are cut to the exact angle needed to fit perfectly into the rim and the
lengths of the ribs are exact to attain a perfect fit as well. The original board
was not treated with this much care as an examination of the original ribs shows.
25) Now the treble bridge is located over the new ribs, measuring in from various
index holes that were cut in the rastin to align the bridge as nearly as possible to where
it belongs. Then the location of the bridge is marked on each of the ribs. The
purpose for this is so that I can shape the ribs in such a way that the highest point of
each rib is as nearly directly under the treble bridge as possible. Even Steinway
doesn't go to this much care when making sound boards but, believe me, the extra time is
worth it in the finished piano.
26) Now the surface of the ribs which is going to glue to the "skin" of
the sound board have been shaped to an arc to physically establish crown into the sound
board. Most companies rely on warpage caused by drying the skin of the board and
then gluing the sound board up dried. Then, when the humidity rises in the board, it
warps; causing crown to develop in the board. In my opinion, this makes the board
less able to freely vibrate and it also is a prescription for future cracking.
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27a)
27b) 
27) Now the new ribs are clamped to the old board so that
the old board will bend into the crowned shape of the new rib. (crown which the old
board had when it was new but which is has since lost.) Then the profile of the old
rib is transferred onto the new rib.
27a) This is a little out of order, but this is the jig in which the crown is cut
into the new ribs.
27b) A drying tent made to dry the panels of the sound boards before they are fitted
to the piano. Many rebuilders have a dedicated room in which they do this but I've
always coveted the space such a room would take up so much that I've never made one.
The drying tent method works equally well and will "go away" when I don't
need it.
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