Restoration of a Mason & Hamlin Ampico for David Lucas Graves & John Herrmann
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1) A photo of the piano before work began.
2) I couldn't resist pulling these off first. They are so badly done, I just
had to get them off the piano. It is very unnecessary and bad workmanship to ever
hold tubing in place on a player piano with hose clamps! The replacements for these
will have the springs inside the tubing as well. These have the springs on the
outside which is somewhat strange.
3) The drawer pulled out to expose the crossover tubing. Each of these tubes
is supposed to have an elbow at the middle to help it flex without kinking when the drawer
is closed. This allows the user to start a roll running and then close the drawer
without any signals being lost. Whoever retubed this piano didn't bother to use the
elbows or the elbows had been lost when the original tubing crumbled and they were never
replaced during the retubing of the piano. All new elbows will have to be bought for
this piano to make this right.
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4) A photo of most of the player mechanism components after
they have been removed from the piano. It is sometimes hard to believe that so much
"stuff" will fit in the area under the piano when you see it spread across a
bench or the floor.
5) The piano with the player mechanism removed. The only parts I leave in the
piano are the brass crossovers and the mounting screws and drawer glides (known commonly
as "roller skates.")
6) A photo of the pile of tubing that came out of the piano. The clear stuff
is incorrect replacement tubing. The black is good tubing but was installed a number
of years ago and is not worth reusing. The gray tubing is from the original
installation. None of this tubing will be reused. However, each piece of
tubing is carefully checked before being thrown out to ensure that I don't miss any
nipples, elbows or reducers that may be lurking in amongst the tubes.
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7) Now the piano is on its feet and ready to have the actual
instrument dismantled.
8) Another angle showing the inside of the piano.
9) First thing to do is pull off the fall board, key slip and cheek blocks and pull
the action out. This photo shows me examining the action type and checking against
Renner samples to find out which type will give me the best touch weight. If we use
hammers of the same weight as the originals (which may or may not be desirable - it's too
soon to call that one because the customer will need to give input here.) Standard
Renner design whippens fit this action admirably. However, if the customer decides
he wishes to go with an accelerated action for lighter touch weight, bigger hammers and
faster repetition, I can't get these whippens from Renner. Tokiwa does make a Renner
clone which has the added acceleration spring. I usually stay away from Japanese
parts because they are not of the same quality in my opinion. However, Tokiwa is the
only one who makes accelerated whippens for this piano. I can go through the Tokiwa
set and repair those aspects of them which is below my standards if that should be the
customer's decision when choosing the parts we will use. In the photo, you see a 50
gram weight on the key being used to examine the touch weight of the piano. The
original weight is right on the correct 50 gram mark and the standard Renner replacements
keep that weight consistent very well. The beauty of the accelerated whippen is that
some of the lead can be removed from the keys causing them to have the correct touch
weight but less internal inertia. This causes the action to be more responsive and
"limber."
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10) A photo of the original ivory. Sadly, this action
has seen a great deal of bad repair work. In addition, all the ivory is coming
unglued. It is possible to restore these original ivories but it will take a great
deal of work. Frankly, I prefer to install new ivory on this keyboard. At the
least, I would prefer new bone keytops. However, the customer can also choose to
install new plastic keytops or to have the original ivory reconditioned as he sees fit.
It only remains to weigh cost against benefit and choose what makes the most sense
to him.
11) All the removable cabinet components are now off the piano. All screws and
hardware have been categorized and stored separately for easy reassembly later. All
brass components will get a good polishing near the end of the project.
12) A photo of the action cavity showing that the damper tray has also been removed.
Since this is a player piano, the original tray will very likely need to be kept
for reuse after restoration. New damper underlevers can be attached to the original
tray so that the player system mates properly with the assembly.
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13) All the strings have been removed from the piano.
The scale on this brand is usually stamped on the plate and this piano was no
exception. It has a standard Mason & Hamlin A scale which is identical to many
other models of A that the company produced. I'm particularly fond of this scale
because of how they treat the upper treble. The last section of the treble bridge
was placed closer to the belly rail (or front gluing surface if you prefer) than is usual
for most high end pianos. This has the effect of making the entire upper section a
little stiffer than normal. This results in the vibrations of the strings being
reflected back into the strings more efficiently. Although it takes the bridge away
from the perfect parabolic curve usually used, the company compensated for the change of
shape by altering the wire sizes in that section. The result is a bright treble with
great sustain that exceeds that to be heard in many other high end brands like Steinway.
The usual bridge shape used by high end companies is a most excellent solution
however, this little "tweak" just is another example of Mason & Hamlin
"kicking things up a notch." These pianos are heavily over-engineered.
14) The tuning pins have all been screwed out of the pin block now. They are
still resting in their holes but can now be removed with your fingers. Before the
plate is removed, all of the scale information including a record of the bass string core
and winding sizes will be made. Plate height, damper lever height and some other
important data will be collected before the plate is removed.
15) All the plate screws have been removed after the plate and pin block were marked
to index them to each other. The screws are placed in a cardboard template to ensure
that they stay in order. When installing a new pin block, it is really only
necessary to keep screws of the same length together. You don't have to organize
them this carefully, however, it just makes things go back together a little faster if I
keep the screws organized like this.
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16) Using heavy paper to mark the index holes I drilled in
step #15. The edges of the papers will show me later where to cut the new pin block
so that it will fit the case perfectly while keeping the plate oriented correctly.
The index holes I drilled earlier are pierced through the paper and the paper is fitted
exactly to the wood of the case. I'll transfer these marks to the new block
later. I'm particularly pleased to see how small the pin block is on this piano.
They made an effort to get the strings in this piano as long as possible and moving
the ends of the speaking lengths closer to the pianist and, therefore, reducing the size
of the pin block is one excellent way to do this. With the block glued and doweled
into the case, the entire assembly is very strong even though the block isn't huge.
17) The plate is resting to the side after having been removed from the piano.
18) A photo of the inside of the piano with the plate out.
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19) Cutting the pin block out of the piano. A 1/2 inch
strip of pin block wood is left attached to the piano and the rest of the block is cut out
with a saw as shown. Once the block is out, the little strip of remaining wood can
be removed with chisels.
20) Drilling out the dowel stand offs that supported the plate. These must be
drilled carefully down to the spot where the piano's rastin exists. The rastin is
the ledge to which the sound board is glued. In order to get the sound board out,
these dowels must be drilled down past the wood of the sound board without drilling down
into the shelf beneath. Also, this brand of piano includes screws all the way around
the circumference of the sound board. Most pianos rely on the glue joint itself to
do all the work. On this Mason & Hamlin, they also added screws for extra
reinforcing of the joint. Another example of over-engineering.
21) The sound board is now out of the piano. The best way to remove the board
while doing the least damage to the piano is to use heavy blunt force to dislodge the glue
joint. This has the effect of breaking the hide glue joint without damaging the wood
of the rim which needs to be retained. However, the sound board doesn't usually take
this stress so lightly. The board seldom comes out in one, intact, piece.
Usually there are additional breaks along existing cracks and some of the delicate edges
fail to come out with the board.
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22) As you see in this photo, the board didn't come out
cleanly. The original glue joint that held it in place was very strong still.
Tests of the down bearing on the strings before I removed the tension from them, showed
that the sound board had lost all its crown and was actually not structurally sound at all
any longer. However, the glue joint that held it to the piano was very strong,
indeed. It was quite a challenge to get this board out.
23) Now the bridges have to be indexed to the original board and the dowels that
pass through the ribs into the bridges have to be drilled out. I need to remove the
bridges so that I can more easily make patterns for the new ones.
24) The bridges are now off the sound board. These, too, were glued on very
well still. It took a great deal of time and effort to finally remove them.
The biggest challenge is to keep the original board as intact as possible so that the
index marks on the board that help me to orient the new board and bridges in the correct
places won't shift.
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25) Removing the bridge pins so that the bridges can be more
easily used to make a pattern for drilling out the new bridges.
26) Using wet cloths along the rastin is an excellent way to dissolve all remaining
glue and remove any remaining bits of sound board from the rastin. This enables me
to use a sharp chisel to lightly scrape away all the residue without harming the wood of
the rastin at all.
27) The process of stripping the old finish off the rim has begun. This looks
bad at the moment, I know. However, I have only started the process. First,
the old shellac or varnish is scraped off the wood as is shown in this photo. Later,
I will use thinner to wash the wood and dissolve the remaining finish away and even out
the color. Only after it is washed will the beauty of the wood be fully exposed.
For now, powdered finish clinging to the wood hides its beauty. The loose
boards and legs will be stripped chemically because that is easier on them. However,
the rim of the piano is much more difficult to strip chemically. I have found that
this method offers a better looking finished product for such a large section of the
piano. Although there are two different techniques of stripping, the finished strip
job will leave all the boards looking the same.
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28) This is the rim of the piano after the scraped varnish
has been washed and evened out with lacquer thinner. I will still go after it again
with another more potent chemical to encourage a more even color distribution. After
that, sanding will be done as needed to attain a good substrate for refinishing.
29) Now, we move on to the action work. These are the damper guide rails after
the old varnish and dirty wood had been sanded away but before the old bushings were
punched out. The next step was to punch the bushings out. By punching them out
rather than drilling them out, I can more readily maintain the shape of the guide holes.
Before new felt is installed, the wood of the rails must be bleached to chemically
neutralize all residue which would discolor the new finish. Then new lacquer is
applied and finally new bushings are installed and clamped into place with cauls made from
#7 bridge pins. This will allow the replacement damper wires to glide up and down
inside the bushings freely without being so free that they aren't able to quickly damp the
strings.
30) The finished damper guide rails after all restoration is complete. I even
cleaned up the tarnish from the screws and gave them a light coat of lacquer to prevent
them from rusting or tarnishing in the future. The clamping cauls will be left in
the bushings until the piano is reassembled. This will ensure that humidity swings
won't effect the bushing felt in such a way as to cause it to change shape enough to
create sticking dampers.
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31) The action stack has been removed from the key frame and
is ready to be taken apart.
32) After getting the action apart, I discovered that the moth damage to this action
went a lot further than I had suspected. The rails which serve as upstops for the
player piano mechanism were felted with material that was badly compromised by moth holes.
I removed all that old felt and replaced it with new red felt as shown in this
photo. Guide hammers are kept on the rails to serve as guides for mounting the new
hammers. Also, one whippen is saved to use in making my final double checks on which
whippens I will order to replace them. The rest of the old parts are discarded.
33) The keys have had what was rest of the ivory removed. What ivory remained
from the original had been badly reglued with inappropriate contact cements. Even
the fronts had fallen off and been reglued. Most of the fronts were cracking up
anyway. By taking these off now, any moisture that the keys absorb during the
removal of the key bushings will evaporate out more quickly than if the keytops were in
place. Since the customer has ordered new ivory keytops, the removal of the old
ivory now makes perfect sense. You will also notice the backchecks of this action
have no leather or felt on them any longer. The leather was badly worn and the
backer felts were moth eaten. Since the damper heads and wires were very tight in
the wood, I chose to refelt and releather these rather than replacing them.
Replacement backchecks are notorious for being the wrong size for many of these higher end
actions, the leather is not stretched to my satisfaction causing poor hammer checking and
they don't fit snugly into the wood like the originals do. Although it is a lot of
extra time and effort, I prefer the better outcome possible by refelting and releather the
original back checks. This photo also shows the key bushings being soaked out.
I am really amazed at some of the bad work which is done to pianos by "so
called" piano technicians. Some of the old bushings clearly fell out years ago.
Some technician glued new ones in but did them all wrong. The bushings were
jammed three times deeper into the mortise than they were supposed to be. That is a
very amatuer mistake...
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34) The felts which engaged the dampers and also the felts which
the player mechanism's poppets engaged the key through were all moth eaten. I chose
to soak them all off and replace them all even though this task was not in the original
contract. These sorts of repairs cannot be left undone if we want a perfect finished
product. I prefer to eat a day's labor on something like this than to ask the
customer for more money or leave an important task undone.
35) The backchecks have now received new underfelts and new buckskin coverings are
being stretched into place. The felt plus the leather stretched under tension work
together to create just the right surface to allow the back checks to catch the hammers
after a hard blow. I'm very pleased with how these came out. New back checks
would not have been as good as these are now. The only down side to restoring the
keys in this way rather than replacing the back checks is that my hand cut felt and
leather doesn't always have that perfect machine cut look from one key to the next; all
looking exactly identical. I prefer to trade the slight variation in overall
cosmetic appearance for a vastly superior function and durability. What's more, the
original back checks are a bit longer in dimension than the available replacements which
also means these restored originals will work better than new replacements.
36) The felts which activate the dampers have already been replaced. Now the
felts which the player mechanism contacts are being replaced. The damper engaging
felts are softer and the poppet felts much more firm. The softer felt is needed to
lend the action a correct feel to the pianist while firmer felt under the key will keep
the player mechanism quiet in its operation while reducing the amount of regulation
problems that will eventually develop due to felt compression over time.
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