Restoration of a Chickering grand for David Burton
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52) If your not making mistakes, your not working!... I had
accidentally miscut the stretcher end of this pin block. Here you see me gluing a
new piece of delignit to the main block so that I can fit it correctly and have the block
glued into the stretcher.
53) The block is set in the piano ready to be glued into place. You can see
the countersinks made in the lip to accommodate the extra bolts in the plate of this
piano.
54) Gluing the pin block into place. The plate is screwed to the block and set
to the correct height to ensure the block will be in exactly the correct location.
Note the lack of any cushions on the finish side. Because of the construction of my
clamps, additional cushions are not really needed. No damage is done to the finish
by using this technique.
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55) During the gluing in of the pin block, the nose bolts were used to
set the plate height. Now the plate has been pulled and the dowel rods that the
plate will sit on around the rim of the piano have been installed. These are set at
exactly the correct height so that the plate will not be warped and yet down bearing will
be perfect.
56) The plate before it was reguilded. The refinishing of the plate was left
until the pin block was glued in and the dowel supports in place and correct. This
way, the plate will only have to be handled once after refinishing.
57) The refinished plate.
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58) Resurfacing the plastic keytops. They had badly yellowed over
time. By heavily sanding them with very fine sand paper and then polishing them, a
nice mellow color and beautiful gloss were obtained. The keyboard look a great deal
like ivory because of the off white color but the gloss makes them look brand new.
59) The restored keytops. The sharps were reconditioned as well.
60) The plan is to replace this entire action. However, upon consideration, I
decided that these keys would have trouble receiving new Renner back checks. The new
Renner wires won't fit the holes in the keys well. They will tend to be a bit loose
and would have to be super glued into place. The original wires, felt and wood heads
of these backchecks are in excellent shape. Only the leather was totally shot.
Rather than replace the backchecks with the possibility of future problems, I
releathered the originals. Here, you see the old leather coming off. This
piano used to be a player piano and the keys had felt bumpers underneath the back ends of
the keys. The glue was failing on these felts and they were moth eaten. They
were no longer needed so I removed them and cleaned up the places where they were.
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61) Gluing on the new leather.
62) The releathered backchecks.
63) Because this piano used to be a player, the left pedal raised the hammer rail
rather than shifting the action. This is not as good a method for manual playing of
the piano. Because the piano was not intended for restoration as a player, I have
reworked the pedal lyre so that the action now shifts. Here, the restored and
reassembled pedal lyre is attached to the underside of the keybed.
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64) In this picture, a hole with a metal actuating lever is visible.
This is not original to the piano. This was added by me in order to change
the action over to a shifting una corda.
65) Because of the addition of the una corda pedal, the other two pedal assemblies
had to be altered as well. Here, you can see the manner in which the mechanism was
altered and restored so that it will function well as a normal grand piano.
66) I apologize for some gaps in the photo records of pianos completed around this
time. I and my wife had been hit with a large number of health problems and we also
had a number of other personal problems that needed sorted out around this time. The
detailed record keeping had to be temporarily sacrificed because there wasn't enough hours
in the day to complete it. Hopefully, we'll be back on track now and further photos
of our projects will be posted as usual. The action, it was decided, should be
totally replaced on this unit. In this picture, the action had been replaced
already. This photo shows how the action was reweighed after installation and
careful regulation. A 50 gram weight is placed on the keystick; then the action is
struck once to break the inertial lock of the parts. The weight should be sufficient
to drop the key to the point of let off, if the key is weighted correctly.
Adjustments to the weights were made as needed. In this case, the action came out
weighing over 90 grams in the bass so this step was really not optional. I went
ahead with this job, although it is very time consuming and pricey because the action
would have felt dreadful otherwise. Forgive the appearance, in this photo, that the
keys aren't very level or spaced well. The spacing, I save for absolutely last so
that I can be sure I don't have to do it more than once and the level had been messed up a
bit from the reweighing process. With the weight of the keys changed so much, it
affected the key level. The keys were releveled after this photo was taken.
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67) This photo shows one of the keys held up so that you can see the new
lead that was installed to correctly balance the action. The action was weight at 50
grams in the bass, tapering off to 48 in the high treble.
68) Because this piano used to be a player, it had a hammer lift rail. We've
already talked about how that was changed and the action was made to shift like a standard
grand. This photo shows how I had to replace the Renner hammer return felts with
thinner, red felt. The clearances were very tight and I wanted to try to give the
artist a full 1 7/8" hammer blow. This meant I needed a little more
"wiggle" room in the hammer swing area. The finished action feels very
much better. It plays just like a standard grand and all those little things that
Chickering had done which made it "not as good" have been eliminated.
69) This is an angle shot that lets you see the entire new action in cross section.
The whole action assembly had to be relocated in order to center the new whippens
over the key capstans. Another thing that had to be altered is the let off rail.
It had to be remortised so I could lower it. Doing that made it possible to
keep the let off buttons regulated in about the middle of their motion so that future
regulation will be easily done. Chickering is well known for making really wonderful
pianos but sometimes the things they included in their actions were very difficult to work
with and unacceptable by industry standards. The whippens on this action were in
fine shape but they had no means to adjust the repetition spring tensions so they had to
be replaced in order to come up with an action that could be readily regulated in the
future.
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70) One of the threaded rods that held the keystick upstop rail had
fallen out long before I got the piano and this had broken the original upstop rail.
Here, you see that a new threaded rod has been installed and a new upstop rail
built.
71) The pedals had also been a problem of bad Chickering design. The way they
were made set the pedal lyre up for eventual failure. I had already restored this so
that it was strong. However, after a little use during regulation, it came loose
again. You see an insert photo in the lower right of this photo. It is to show
how long a lag bolt that I fitted into the pedal mechanism to permanently secure it.
With two of these worked up into the braces, this lyre should never give us a
problem again.
72) Photos of the finished product.
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73) Photos of the finished product.
74) Photos of the finished product. The color is richer than this photo would
indicate. The lighting was poor in the shop the day this was taken.
75) Photos of the finished product. The color is richer than this photo would
indicate. The lighting was poor in the shop the day this was taken.
