Restoration of a Fischer Ampico grand for Jim Durfee
22) 
23) 
24) 
22) Here you see the bass and treble stack equalizers and
the pump reservoir before they were restored. All three had been given fresh
pneumatic cloth which was still in perfect condition. However, despite the perfect
condition of the cloth, the pneumatics still leaked badly. This indicates that the
pneumatics were not restored properly previously. The cloth isn't damaged, here, so
the leaks must be coming from improper installation or damage in the boards which wasn't
repaired.
23) When the largest pneumatic (the reservoir) was taken apart, I found that the
fixed board was, indeed, damaged and in need of repair. If it had been any worse, I
would probably have made a new one. However, I was able to successfully restore the
board, dress it and refinish it before recovering it with fresh cloth. All the
boards also received a fresh coat of shellac on the insides to ensure no air can seep
through the cross section of the wood. You'll also notice, in this picture, that the
boards are no longer hinged to each other. All pneumatics will be getting fresh
hinges made in the Amphion style whether they need them or not.
24) The pedal mechanism before restoration began. This part of the piano had
never been restored. The cloth was all original.
25) 
26) 
27) 
25) The cover plate is off the pedal pneumatic assembly
revealing the pneumatics inside.
26) The lifter rods for the damper and soft pedals are tipped with felt and covered
in leather. The original leather was starting to rot. Most rebuilders would
have just left it alone since it still functions properly. I removed this old
leather and made new covers. You can see a circle of leather has been cut into a
star shape so that it can be glued onto the rod. To the left is the second circle of
leather before it was cut into the star. The felt gets no glue, just the wood dowel.
Then the leather is stretched over the felt and clamped onto the dowel, using
thread as a clamp, until the hide glue can set up. Once the hide glue has set, the
thread can be removed and the lifter rod will have new leather.
27) The pedal pneumatics, equalizers and reservoir have been rehinged. You can
see the way in which the hinges are installed. This technique yields the maximum
flexibility in the pneumatic while providing the maximum in strength. The hinges
were allowed to set up over night before covering of the pneumatics began. This
isn't absolutely necessary but it makes it easier to keep the pneumatic square and to
cover quickly, if the hinges are totally secure; especially on these larger pneumatics and
spring loaded pneumatics.
28) 
29) 
30) 
28) After hinging the reservoir, I installed the internal
springs and a new spacer that keeps the springs from blowing the pneumatic wide open.
After I got this far, I discovered another spot on the pneumatic that needed to be
reglued before covering. You can see the clamps on it where this was done. The
last reinforcing tacks to be used were copper. I'm replacing them all with
galvanized. These are tougher, easier to remove in the future and not susceptible to
rust. The copper tacks tend to fall apart when you go to remove them in the future.
29) The bushings that the pedal lift rods ride in were getting a little too loose to
please me. I replaced these bushings in this photo.
30) The finished equalizers, reservoir and valves. Each component is carefully
tested to see that it is air tight and working perfectly before it is set aside for
reinstallation into the piano. The nipple block that is mounted to the reservoir got
a new packing leather gasket. A little information on gaskets is in order here.
Cork is considered an excellent gasket material provided the grain of the cork is
very fine and the parts are able to be placed under considerable compression.
Leather is considered a superior gasket material anywhere the mating surfaces are less
perfect or where the parts can't be screwed together with a great deal of
compression. Amphion used cork gaskets almost exclusively throughout these
mechanisms. The cork never rots like leather so it would seem an excellent material
to use. You'd almost never have to replace it for any reason... However, the
cork has a terrible tendency to cling. This means that it almost always tears when
you try to take the components apart. In addition, I seem to have very bad luck
getting cork to seal properly. I don't know whether it is just the cork or me but I
don't do well with cork. Often cork has to be coated with shellac before assembly in
order to make it air tight. This means that the gasket will be ruined the first time
you have to take the device apart for servicing. Leather never has this problem.
Although it can rot over time, it is more air tight, easier to work with, requires
less tightness in the screws to be air tight and disassembles like a dream. For this
reason, I replace most of the cork gaskets with leather. The only exception to this
is the unit valves. I use cork for these because of the way they are mounted.
The mounting devices are capable of exerting tremendous pressure on the gaskets so they
stay beautifully air tight. Since I use prestamped gaskets made of rubberized and
talced cork for the unit valves, they will not be as troublesome to take apart.
However, years from now even this cork will seize to the wood and be ruined when taking
the valves off the trunk. Frankly, if prestamped leather was available as
replacements for these cork gaskets for the unit valves, I'd seriously consider using it.
31) 
32) 
33) 
31) The pedal assembly ready to be put back together.
32) The pneumatics are back in place. Note that all the nipples on all the
components of the piano are being removed, cleaned and resealed with burnt shellac.
In addition, all lifter fingers and mounted items that are under stress during operation
are given some burnt shellac to lock them in place before they are screwed down.
33) The cover board is back in place. The cover board requires no burnt
shellac to lock it down because it needs to come off for servicing and it is under no
stress whatsoever during operation.
34) 
35) 
36) 
34) One of the expression devices before work began.
35) The expression is now taken apart most of the way. This shows how many
parts there are to one of these expressions. Some of the valves inside the mechanism
were still covered in good leather. However, it is easy to replace this leather and
now is a good time since it is out in the open. Even though the large expression and
the soft play valves are covered in good leather, it is original and does get exposed to
air so it will probably be wearing out sooner than later. I'll just replace it so
that it won't rot out on us during our lifetime.
36) The trunk board has been cleaned up. You can see that I have refreshed the
shellac sealant in the pouch wells on this board already. The blond board to the
lower right is the lever which connects the expression pneumatics together. This
board has already been rehinged. I did that task before I took the expression apart
so that I could use the current positions of the pneumatics to ensure that the hinge was
aligned perfectly. The finish on this board has been cleaned and polished and the
black hinge board repainted. The pneumatics on this device were recovered previously
although the valves weren't touched. The cloth was in good shape but the
installation was poor and leaking was prevalent. Still, the previous workman had
been smart enough to keep the boards lined up properly and marked very well so I was
confident that I could count on the alignments of these boards as being correct.
37) 
38) 
39) 
37) This is a shot of the only pouches in an Ampico which
are almost always still as perfect as the day they were new. These are the lock and
cancels on the bottom of the unit. They are exposed to almost no air, ever.
They are also made of leather which is thinner than anything I can buy today. Since
these are very delicate in their operation, it is always preferred to keep these pouches
by just resealing them than to replace them. That's provided they are still as
strong as the day they were made, which these are. In front of the trunk board, you
see three circles of newspaper. These were used to cover the pouches when the
pneumatic cloth was glued over them to prevent the glue from getting on the pouches.
I always find it fascinating to check out the little bit of "the news of the
day" that can be seen from the 1920's on these little circles of newsprint. You
can see how little air gets into these pouch wells by looking at the color of the
newspaper. It is almost as good looking as the day it was printed!
38) Through this section many of the photos will be smaller in size.
Rebuilding the expression mechanism is a complex operation so I'm going to show a lot of
photos. However, to save disc space on the server, I'm not going to make them really
large. In this photo, new paper covers have been glued over the lock & cancel
pouch wells and signal line to keep glue from dripping on them when they are covered with
pneumatic cloth. Also, the expression valve trunk has been repainted as seen in this
photo.
39) The same valve trunk from the other side. This shows the new pouches.
This side of the trunk has not yet been repainted nor has the pneumatic cloth been
glued over the signal line. You can see the signal line showing as a slot along the
edge of the board. Each of the pouches is triple sealed, then talced off then tested
to be sure it is air tight.
40) 
41) 
42) 
40) This is the unit valve that activates the soft play pneumatic which is mounted
beside the spring pneumatic. These were the bottom two pneumatics attached to the
mechanism in photo #34. The spring pneumatic is set opposite the expression
pneumatics which are mounted on the top. It fights with the expression pneumatics;
one trying to open the expression valve and the other trying to close it. It is
basically a very sensitive spring in its function. The pneumatic that this valve
activates controls a valve which simply closes of suction to the stack. The unit
valve has received a new pouch (triple sealed and talced to be air tight) and the divider
has received a fresh coat of shellac sealant. The valve itself has received new
leather inside and out and the shims that hold the valve seat in the correct place have
been punched out. Above the black shims you see the main expression control valve
with its new leather covering. The old leather is sitting on the bench to the right
of the new.
41) This is the manual expression control pouch. By activating this pouch, you
close of suction to the expression valves on the unit. By opening and closing this
pouch, you can open and close the function of the expression valves. It has received
a new pouch and will shortly receive a new leather gasket as well. This valve seats
against pneumatic cloth when installed on the unit. I really don't feel that cork
can seal against the finest textured cloth without the aid of a seal coat of shellac.
Leather, on the other hand, can seal against the cloth without any further help.
This makes future servicing of the unit much easier. Note the valve seat well
on the left part of the unit has been resealed with orange shellac.
42) The main suction box which contains the main control valves. This has been
totally resealed inside and given a fresh coat of paint on the outside.
43) 
44) 
45) 
43) This is the valve which is controlled by the soft play pneumatic and unit valve.
The one on the left has just been rebuilt and the one on the right is the
unrestored unit from the other expression device. The gaskets had to be replaced
even if I hadn't already planned to but the valve leather still looked pretty good.
However, I replaced it anyway because I wanted to make sure the valve was flat and perfect
and that it would last the longest possible amount of time. Small leather discs are
placed on either side of the valve itself to keep air from leaking around the valve
stem. These also have been replaced with even heavier and more snugly fitted ones
than was on the original. By this, I mean that they fit around the valve stem more
snugly, not the valve itself. The valve itself must be permitted a slight amount of
wobble to ensure that it will seat properly. The original design, I felt, still left
open the possibility for air to trickle by. This has been corrected.
44) The two control valves are installed back into the box. You can see inside
the box and note the expression control valve in place. The seats that these valves
mate against have also been cleaned to ensure a good seal.
45) New pneumatic cloth covering is placed on the expression valve trunk.
46) 
47) 
48) 
46) The other side of the trunk has been taped off and
repainted. You can see the restored manual expression valve on the bottom left
corner with its new gasket in place.
47) The suction inlet nipple has received a new leather gasket of a heavier weight
than the original. It will be very air tight and will last longer than the original
because of its weight.
48) This shows a before and after of the expression control valves. On the
left is a valve that has not been restored and the one on the right has been. At the
bottom of the picture of each valve, you see a light colored circle. This circle is
the valve seat for the lock and cancel valve which is inside the trunk and not visible in
this photo. The original design called for this valve seat (shown in the photo) to
be made of felt. I've had trouble with these felt seats leaking air and causing the
expression tests to not come out right. Therefore, on the new design, these felt
seats have been replaced with heavy flap valve leather that is similar in texture to the
leather your belt (for your pants) is made of. In addition, a layer of thinner
cowhide is glued onto this base leather circle to bring the total thickness of the seat to
the correct place so the valve travels the right distance before seating. The valve
itself is bare wood which has been lapped on a piece of glass with fine sand paper to
ensure that it is totally flat. The extra layer of leather also ensures that the
valve will not leak against the seat since the heavy leather base has a courser grain to
the suede side. All these layers are glued together with PVC-E glue to ensure an air
tight seal that will hold despite the mixture of materials. You'll also note in this
photo that the cork gasket has been replaced with leather. The valve at the top of
the photo also received new leather on both sides.
49) 
50) 
51) 
49) This photo shows how I make gaskets to match in with
these complex devices with so many holes drilled in them. The device is coated with
chalk and then pressed into the leather. The chalk is transferred to the leather,
showing me where I need to punch out my holes and where to trim the edges. The arrow
points to the new leather lock & cancel valve seats ready for installation placed
above the old felt seats which I will not be reinstalling.
50) The arrow in this photo shows how I get the valve travel right on these
expression valves. This is how all "outside" valve are done. The
tool under the valve is just the right thickness to represent correct valve travel.
The valve is pressed together using this spacer. Then the spacer is carefully
withdrawn and a dot of hide glue placed on the valve stem above the valve head to lock it
into place.
51) The expression valve box has now been put back together. The signal lines
are blocked off and then each valve is tested. Also, the air-tightness of the device
is being tested. A stethescope is used to listen all around the gaskets and the
valves to hear tell tale sounds that indicate that there is a leak. No device I
rebuild is set aside until I'm positive that it is as air tight as it can be and each
component works as expected.