Restoration of a Steinway Upright for the Vonsiatsky
Family
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1) A photo taken just after work began. This shows the action which is
somewhat unusual. Many early Steinways like this one are not worth restoring because
the actions are shot and replacement parts can't be found. Happily, this action is
in good shape and I have been able to locate new hammer butt flanges for this unit at my
supplier! The plan is to install (at no extra charge) new hammer butt flanges into
this action for the customer as a thank you for their patience during my and my wife's
recent illness.
2) The cabinet boards are totally removed, including the key bed. The piano's
sound board is now totally revealed and ready for the plate to be unstrung.
3) The back of the piano has two screen mesh covers screwed to it. These are
in suprisingly good condition. Usually, these covers have had their screens damaged
or removed years ago. But this unit still has its screens intact and in good
condition!
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4) The back of the piano after the screens were removed. You can see in this
photo and the next that a string test for crown is being performed. This test tells
us whether the sound board still has crown or not. Crown is one of the
important indicators as to whether a sound board is still strong enough to be reused.
This board had 1/16" of crown while the tension was still on the strings and
that amount increased to 1/8" after the tension was removed. This is one good
sign that the board has life left in it. When the piano was originally purchased and
before it was brought into the shop, the board looked just as good. It also showed
very little sign of cracking in the board. However, after the piano was brought into
the shop and dried down, the board cracked up rather severely. A drying tent will
still have to be made over the piano to dry the board still further, but, so far, the
board is showing about 25' worth of cracks. This is a very bad sign. It is my
intention to ask the owner to seriously consider replacing this sound board.
5) There are many benefits to replacing this sound board over reusing the original.
The tone of the original sound board is still very nice and the fact that it has
crown and some down bearing (see #6 below) indicates that it can be patched back together
for reuse. However, the value of the finished piano will only be about 1/3 that of
its value with a new sound board installed. There aren't too many investments one
can make that are almost sure to give you an immediate 300% return on your money, but a
new sound board in this piano could do nearly that! In addition, (taking into
consideration how the board has cracked after being dried down) the 110 year old board
can't be counted on to survive for any given length of years. It may last another 50
years or it may last another 5, there is no way to be sure. A new board will last
the rest of the owner's life and well into and, perhaps, beyond the lives of their
children. Finally, the tone quality of a new board will be a step above this
original board as well. The tone of this original board is nothing to sneeze at, it
is surprisingly beautiful sounding considering its condition, but a new board will be even
better.
6) Checking the down bearing. The bearing is the amount of distance that the
sound board pushes the strings away from being "straight." In this case,
the bearing was a little disappointing in places but acceptable and it increased slightly
after the tension was removed. This means that the board was still pushing on the
strings, so it does still have some strength in it for now.
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7) The strings have been removed.
8) Now the tuning pins have also been removed. The originals had blued steel
heads and nickel plated threads. The new pins will be all nickel plated for a better
look and superior rust and tarnish resistance.
9) Removing the screws that hold the plate in place. Typical of late 1800's
Steinway craftsmanship, this plate had about twice the number of screws in it that it
actually needed. One of the screws, in fact, was locked so hard into the wood that
it had to be heated to get it out. There is no doubt about the fact that this is a
very high quality instrument and will be a wonderful music maker when it's done.
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10) The screws are pierced through a layer of cardboard to keep track of which size
screws go where. They have been placed into the cardboard in a similar pattern to
how they go into the piano so that there won't be any mix ups when it comes time to put
them back into the piano.
11) Removing the plate. You can see the plate hanging from the winching straps
that go up to ratchets in the ceiling and the piano in the foreground. The sides of
the piano were simply screwed to smaller sized side pieces which made it very easy to get
them off. In fact, the sides had to come off in order to even get the plate out of
the piano.
12) The piano after the plate was removed. The pin block is still solid in
general but the areas around the tuning pins are contaminated from moisture and rust.
The block will definitely need new pin block material inserts. The new
inserts will be made much thicker than the original, this will leave the piano's tuning
stability excellent for even more years than the original.
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13) Removing the bridge pins. There are about 500 steel pins in the bridges of
all pianos which lock the strings onto the bridges themselves. These pins should be
incredibly tight and we prefer to see no cracks (or only slight, cosmetic hairline cracks
at most) in the bridges at the bass of these pins. In this case, the pins were not
very tight any more but the wood showed very little sign of any type of cracks forming.
The bridges are typical of the high quality of Steinway work. They are
vertically laminated and holding up almost as good as the day they were new. With
over sized pins driven into them, they will work just as well as when they were new and
should last for another century as long as the piano is taken care of and not subjected to
large swings in humidity over the decades.
14) The sound board was cracked badly enough that the customer decided to have it
replaced. The old board has been marked and indexed, then knocked out of the piano.
The back structure and the ledge the sound board glued to (called the Rastin) are
visible.
15) The old sound board is out. The original board will be used as a pattern to
help realign the bridges onto the new board.
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16) Restoring the keys. First, the old bushing felt is
soaked out of the keys. New felt will be installed. Then the keys will have a
great deal of restoration work done to the ivory. It was not immediately noticeable
until I really started to work on these that the ivory is loosing its glue joint to the
keys. Each piece will be painstakingly removed and glued back on to ensure a good
joint and a good appearance. This wasn't in the original deal with the customer so
the work will be done for free on their behalf to ensure that the finished product is very
nice.
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19) Rebushing the keys. The cauls shown in this photo
help to ensure that each key will fit the key guide pin correctly.
20) Many of the ivories had come loose over the years. This photo shows them
being reglued. This particular type of project takes more spring clamps than any
other task I do in the shop.
21) Cleaning the dirt from the sides of the keys and lightly sanding the surface of
the ivories in preparation for bleaching them. This process must be done carefully
so as not to change the shapes of the keys. If you sand to vigorously, you can make
the sides of the keys look wrong. Sometimes a little staining must be left on the
sides because any further sanding would not be possible without harming the shape.
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22) This shows the difference between a dirty key side and
one that is as clean as can reasonably be accomplished.
23) Resurfacing the sharps with fresh ebony color. The goal here is to create
an even black as well as a smooth touch for the pianist on the tops and the sides of the
sharps.
24) The bleaching process revealed to us that the glue joints of the ivories heads
were ready to start failing us. The short exposure to the bleaching moisture caused
them to lift up. This was an opportunity to refresh these glue joints with new hide
glue colored with titanium dioxide. This should have enabled us to prevent any
future problems with them coming unglued.
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25) Restoring the key frame and under felts that the keys
sit on.
26) The original under felts (called punchings) were larger and thicker than I can
readily get from my suppliers. Therefore, rather than downgrade the quality of the
felts to equal what is currently available, I made new punchings by hand from a sheet of
quality felt.
27) Now it's time to get the case ready for refinishing. The cabinet has
already been totally taken apart. Now it is stripped and wood repairs are made.
The sides of the case had some loose veneer which is being reglued with fresh hide
glue in this photo. The fresh hide glue will bond with the old hide glue which has
failed. It will, in fact, revitalize the old glue to a certain extent as well.
This will result in the best possible bond. Using a more modern glue to make
this repair would not yield nearly as good or permanent a result. In addition to the
veneer repair, all areas that had been damaged over the years were filled and sanded
smooth so that the finished surface will be as flat and nice as is possible.
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28) Time to replace the pin block. On these uprights,
it's far better (in my opinion) to lay in an insert of Delignit rather than cut out the
entire plank. On most upright brands, this plank isn't thick enough to begin with.
Therefore, the insert yields a much thicker lamination to hold the tuning pins.
On a Steinway, the laminations go very deep as they should. However, the
overall structure of the piano and the safety and condition of the glued down top board
are preserved better if the tuning pin areas are simply replaced with an insert.
Doing this insert process is often harder than replacing the entire plank but it's worth
it to get a better result. This photo shows a custom made jig that fits this piano
only. The jig is in two pieces; one for the piano and one for the new piece of pin
block material. The piano jig is nailed to the original pin block and serves to
guide my router as it removes the old wood. The other part of the jig was created
when the first part was cut out. That portion is nailed to the new piece of pin
block material and again guides the router in making a perfect matching piece to go in the
hole created in the first step.
29) Here you see the insert piece which has been rough cut to the needed dimensions.
The jig is nailed to it and the assembly is ready for the router to do its work.
Despite the beauty of this technique it is almost always necessary to do a little
careful sanding and shaping before the insert will drop into place. It is necessary
that the insert fit so tightly that it doesn't rock or wobble around inside the hole.
Yet, it must be loose enough that it can be pulled back out again after it is
installed the first time.
30) Now the insert has been dropped into the hole.
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31) The plate is now laid over the insert and clamps are
used to pull it into the exact position it occupies when the piano is strung. The
plate is then used as a template to transfer all the locations for the tuning pin and any
screw holes that occupy the blank.
32) The plate is then removed and the insert is pulled out by running a couple
screws into it in places that will never see a tuning pin or screw. These screws are
used as handles to pull the insert out of the piano. It must be pulled straight out
or it will jam in place because the fit is so exact. Then the marks that were placed
on the insert are drilled out at the press. The drill press is adjusted to give the
tuning pins just the right angle to resist the string tension and allow the coils of wire
that wrap around them to lay correctly.
33) The pin block is then coated with epoxy on all the sides and the back and pushed
down into the hole again. The epoxy is used to take up any small imperfections in
the joint so that the original pin block wood and the insert are now totally one piece.
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34) Turning my attention to the sound board, I've removed
the bridges and have removed all traces of sound board wood and glue residue from the
bottoms of them.
35) Here, the bridges are being restored on the bench before they are glued to the
new sound board.
36) The restored treble bridge.
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37) New ribs have been planed to exacting widths and then
fitted for length into the case of the piano.
38) Now it's time to adjust the gluing surfaces of the ribs to a 60' arched crown.
To do this in such a way that the highest point of each rib is directly below the
long bridge, the bridge is placed onto the ribs and measurements taken to orient it
correctly. Then each rib is marked to show where the highest point needs to be.
39) Here the reibs have been crowned and the profiles cut and sanded to match the
originals. The angle of the photo shows how the crown of the board is already
established in the ribs before we ever begin gluing up the sound board itself. To
see how the ribs were planed, marked for profile and crowned, see the following photos
which are shared with the Fischer Ampico being done at the same time. The ribs for
both pianos were don't at the same time. Click each phrase to see the photo: Planing the ribs for width; both sets of ribs lined up in an
assembly line for planing; crowning
the ribs; marking the
profiles to match the original.
© Copyright 2010 {David Rodgers' Piano Rebuilding}. All Rights Reserved.