Restoration of a Steinway A for the Skinner family
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1) The piano before work began. I apologize for the
dust on the camera lens in this picture. The photo makes the piano look pretty good.
In fact, in poor lighting many of the problems with the piano aren't readily
noticeable. However, there are many problems with this piano that make rebuilding a
necessity. This unit was rebuilt not too long ago. Not more than 20 years ago
or so. Sadly, the rebuilder failed to do the work properly in many respects making
this current restoration necessary. If he/she had only taken a few extra pains and
used a bit better materials and refinishing techniques, all this extra work could possibly
have been avoided.
2) The lid and other removable cabinet parts have been removed and the hardware
taken off and catalogued.
3) The strings, tuning pins, dampers and damper underlevers are now out and a
pattern is being made for the string maker. In the middle of the photo can be seen
the crib sheet for this piano. Each piano in the shop that is being rebuilt gets one
of these. It contains the name and serial number of the piano. It also
contains a record of the stringing scale, plate height, damper lever position and any
other vital statistics needed to be able to put the piano back together again properly.
Upon removing the damper underlevers, it was discovered that the pinning on these
parts is too loose and is probably the reason for some of the noises in the action.
At least parts of these will have to be repinned.
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4) In the poor light of the owners home, this sound board
looked as if it might have been replaced at the last restoration. By noting in the
photos of this piano the various wooden parts (except the pin block) you will note that
the wood shows very little oxidation. The bridges, sound board, key bed, etc. all
look almost new. In fact, the bridges were not properly repinned at the last rebuild
and the caps on the bridges are original. There is some small cracking viewable in
the bridges in the bright lights of the shop that are slight enough that they will be
eliminated while the bridges are reconditioned. The wood of the bridges, although
not new as they might have appeared upon casual inspection, is so nice that it will make
for an excellent result with a simple reconditioning. Although the board is still
fairly blond and new looking, a close inspection reveals a number of very worrisome
problems. First, there is a certain pattern of grain staining in numerous places on
the board which don't show up well in the digital photo but which I've attempted to
highlight with circles. These patterns are close fitting lines of dark color which
coincide with the grain of the board. Actually, the board is covered with these
patterns. I've found that this grain stained pattern is sometimes indicative of a
board section which will become filled with cracks when the board is dried. We will
have to watch these areas carefully when we dry the board to see what they do. How
these areas perform will help us determine whether we want to replace this board or not.
The other sad event that becomes noticeable when bright lighting is applied to the
board is that there are about 15 cracks in the board which the previous rebuilder
attempted to shim. This previous restorer, however, botched the job. Instead
of opening up each crack and filling the void with a spruce shim which fills up the entire
depth of the crack so that the two sides of the crack are bound back together, this person
simply installed very shallow and slender slivers of wood just at the surface to hide the
fact that this area was cracked. The effect of these tiny splinters of wood is
excellent cosmetically. So much so that they are virtually invisible. This
type of repair may look good and be very hard to detect but it doesn't fix the problem.
All 15 will have to be done over. In addition, several new cracks have
already appeared in the board and we have yet to dry it. The areas previously
mentioned may actually open up into entire sections of board that literally shreds apart
if luck is against us. This board, amazingly, still has about 3/32" of crown at
the highest spot and still sounds tight and resonant when you pound it. However, the
extraordinary number of cracks has me seriously concerned that we may be better off
replacing the board. While I am able to rebuild this board, I feel it would be poor
economy to reuse a board which, when finished, contains between 20 and 30 shims! In
the end, the decision will be left up to the owner.
5) The plate as it appeared after removal from the cabinet of the piano but before
it was placed in temporary storage. The guilding done to this plate by the last
rebuilder was mediocre in quality. The clear coat didn't flow well and there is a
good deal of overspray. Also, part of the numbering that was originally on the plate
was not replace by the previous rebuilder. I have been able to reconstruct what
these numbers originally were and will apply them to the newly guilded plate in the
appropriate location.
6) This is a picture of the old, worn out pin block. If the last rebuilder had
simply taken the time to replace this pin block during the last rebuild, there is an
excellent chance the owner would not have decided to rebuild the piano. This is yet
another good example of poor economy in piano rebuilding. The old pin block simply
could not take the pressure of the oversized pins. I firmly believe that when you
rebuild a piano to the point of removing the plate, there is no point in putting that
piano back together without a new pin block. For every piano I've seen that was
rebuilt by someone with the original pin block, claiming it was in good enough shape to
last for decades yet, I can show you a pin block that failed to hold those pins tight for
a reasonable length of years. In this case, the last rebuilder had replaced the
original 2/0 tuning pins with huge 5/0 and some 6/0 pins and yet they still became
untunable far sooner than the expense of a rebuild justifies.
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7) Indexing the pin block so that the new block will fit
exactly in the same way into the case.
8) An area of the stretcher was scraped to reveal the wood underneath. It
became apparent that this piano did not start out its existence as an ebony unit.
The veneer is mahogany. This will make refinishing the piano in black again much
harder than was originally anticipated. Not that this will cost the owner any
additional money, but it will take about an extra week of labor due to the open grain of
mahogany verses the closed grain of ebony used by Steinway in their original ebony units.
Another aspect of why this piano had to be redone at this time became painfully
clear when some of this lacquer was scraped off the piano. Many of the surfaces of
the lacquer in various places on the piano has begun to crack. Upon scraping some of
this lacquer, I can see why. The material is too thick and of a very hard and
inflexible variety. Looking on the bright side, this material scrapes off with
extreme ease since it is very poorly bonded to the wood.
8a) Rebushing the damper guide rails. Steinway guide rails require such heavy
bushings that it is necessary to install the new felt in two layers. Here, the first
layer is going in and being held with large clamping cauls while the glue dries.
9) The dowels that reinforce the glue joints on the pin block have been drilled out in
this picture.
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10) The pin block has now been cut out of the piano. First
the block is cut out leaving a narrow strip of wood near the joint along the stretcher.
This ensures the stretcher isn't damaged. Then the strip is chiseled off the
stretcher by hand. This leaves the stretcher in such a condition that it is ready
for the new pin block to be glued to it.
11) The gutted pisno.
12) The last rebuilder rebushed these damper guide rails. Clearly, the felt is
in just the same condition it was in when the did the work. No wear is evident
whatsoever in the felt. Sadly, the person who did the work didn't know what they
were doing. They tried to rebush them with one layer of thick felt. However,
the felt they used wasn't thick enough and the dampers were left with a great deal of
wobble in them. Even though the work was recently done, it must be done over again.
They also "cheaped out" on the felt under the rails. Instead of a
single piece of felt, they chopped up a piece into very narrow (sloppy) strips to save a
tiny bit on felt. This will also be done over.
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12a) The second and third set of rails from the front are Steinway
rails being rebushed. The second set back are to this piano and have their large
cauls holding the first layer of felt in exactly the right size while the glue sets up.
12b) The finished rails. All six of the pianos currently being rebuilt had their
rails done at the same time. The third set of guide rails back from the front go to
this piano. This picture shows the smaller cauls still in place holding the second
layer of felt while the glue dries. All the rails are scraped, sanded, bleached and
refinished before they are rebushed with extra quality bushing cloth. Many piano
makers, including Steinway, put no finish of any kind on their damper guide rails.
This causes the wood to become badly oxidized. It isn't easy to see these rails in
the finished piano, but they can be seen if you look for them. I want any piano that
leaves my shop to have everything look brand new if possible even if it is somewhat hard
to see it in the finished product. Before these rails were started on, the wood was
actually a medium dark brown from oxidation. Now they look as good as the day they
were new.
13) This picture shows the lid to this piano in the stripping tank. It was a
pleasure to watch the black lacquer come off this board. It revealed to us that this
piano started out its life in a beautiful mahogany. A past restoration converted it
over to ebony.
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14) Now it is this piano's turn under the drying blankets.
The board is to be dried to see how badly it is going to crack. Even if it
didn't crack at all, there are so many shims in this board already that I would consider a
new board essential if money were no object.
15) Scraping the rim of the piano. After scraping the rim will be treated with
stripper as well to even out the color. However, the rims of the pianos must be
stripped in the main shop and, therefore, scraping is done first whenever possible to
minimize the amount of time the odor of the stripper is allowed in this room.
16) The owner has decided to go black on the finish. Therefore a different
filler was used on this unit. This water based latex filler not only fills the grain
but also automatically levels any minor dents and scratches at the same time with no
additional effort. It isn't very useful as a clear coat filler because it is very
difficult to stain this filler dark enough to look right. Since the piano will be
lacquered black, this doesn't matter.
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