Restoration of a Schubert Grand for the Barry Family
Due to disc space restrictions the large
copies of photos for this project are no longer present on the web. If you want to
see the full sized pictures, please email me with your request. A CD which contains
all the pictures in full is available for a small fee.
Click the thumbnails to see the pictures enlarged. Then click your "back"
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1 - 2) Before Shots of the outside.
3 - 4) Before Shots of the inside.
5 - 6) Before Shots of the action cavity showing how the pin block is installed and
how humidity had caused the glue of the pin block to completely dissolve, causing the
layers of the pin block to actually fall off onto the action.
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7 - 8) Taking measurements and preparing to disassemble the piano.
9 - 10) The piano being disassembled.
11) The old bass bridge
12) The old pin block.
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15) 
13) This piano uses a very rare mounting assembly for the sound board. Here
you see the sound board and the iron frame that serves as the inner rim.
14) The piano is completely apart.
15) Lubricating the spring loaded parts of the damper system.
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18) 
16) Shows the action before it was started. Here the sample hammers were being
removed for duplication.
17) Here all the shanks and flanges have been removed. The next step is to
thoroughly clean the action stack that remains.
18) While rebushing the keys, it became apparent that many of the sharps had cracks
in them. Here all the cracked keys have been glued back together and are sitting in
clamps. The problem wasn't serious enough to warrant replacing the keys but it could
have effected the fit of the keys to the guide pins. Now the keys will fit the pins
well and will remain stable.
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21) 
19) Here the keys have been rebushed.
20 - 21) These are before pictures of the condition of the ivories before bleaching.
The flash of the camera tends to make them look better than they really are in #20
but #21 shows fairly well how yellow they were. Up close, they looked positively
shabby.
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22) The rim after stripping. The last touch ups and
color evening were performed with denatured alcohol.
23) The rim has now been stained, sealed, filled and lacquered.
24) One of the decorative features of this leg was broken off and long since lost.
A new scroll had to be made for it. Fresh wood was attached using a
countersunk joint and then carved into a new scroll.
