Restoration of a Sterling player piano for the Stone family of Plano Texas.
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1) This is a "before" picture, taken just moments before the work
commenced.
2) Here you can see the action and the player stack and wind motor governor have
been removed and are sitting on the floor. This piano had its player mechanism
rebuilt by a very competent individual in the mid 70's. That restoration is holding
up very well so there will be little work done to the player at this time. However,
the piano itself is to be rebuilt and a few small items associated with the player
mechanism are to be attended to.
3) Here, the piano has been tipped back a bit to afford easier access to the bottom
mechanism. The mechanism is being removed in order to gain access to the strings and
plate.
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4) The piano is now fully "gutted."
5) The loose cabinet parts, keybed and plate laying together to keep them separate
from all the other piano parts in the shop belonging to other customers.
6) Three pianos are being worked on at the same time and all three are ready to have
their sound boards dried. Therefore, all three are being put under a tent together.
The air under the tent will be gently heated and well circulated with a fan to keep
a constant humidity level all around each piano.
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7) The tent is now closed up and the warmed air is swirling
around inside.
8) The areas around the tuning pins have been routed out using special templates.
New Delignit pin block inserts are made from the same set of templates. You
can see in the picture that the left most hole (for the high treble) is routed but the
insert has not been cut yet. The center hole is pictured with the new insert sitting
along side of it and the right side hole (for the bass) has the negative portion of the
template that was used to cut that hole still in place. You can see by the pile of
wood chips how many chips are produced by routing out these three sections. It may
not be apparent in the photo, but that pile of saw dust is a foot deep.
9) In order to get the templates and router into the areas needed to install the
inserts, a board that was glued to the top portion of the "spine" of the piano
had to be chiseled off. When this piece was removed it revealed that the
multilaminated portion of the pin block was coming unglued from the core at its top edge.
Fresh hide glue was inserted into the areas that had failed and a heavy, specially
sized and planed clamping caul was placed over the pin block and clamped into place.
Hide glue is a must in this situation because it is impossible to get at the glue
joint to removed all of the old glue before regluing. Since hide glue was the glue
used originally, the fresh hide glue will help reconstitute what glue residue is still in
the joint. They will combine with each other and bring the joint back to its
original strength.
The inserts are made of material that is even harder and stronger than the original hard maple pin block was. In addition, upright pin blocks tend to have only about 1/2" to 3/4" of their outermost surface made of wooden layers like plywood. The grain of these layers are put together in alternating directions to keep them from expanding and contracting during humidity swings and to keep them from cracking under the tremendous pressure of the tuning pins. Sadly, the rest of the wood that holds the tuning pins on uprights like this is made up of solid maple which does expand and contract with humidity swings and can crack under the pressure of the tuning pins. The inserts are made from material that is multilaminated as described above through the entire thickness. Every bit of the wood that holds the tuning pins will now be multilaminated.
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10) You can see that the loose boards of the piano have been stripped to reveal the
original red mahogany. Stripping revealed that the piano's original color was very
much towards the red end of the color spectrum for mahogany. The true color of the
wood doesn't show here since the wood is now bare of all finish. It will darken up
and come to life once it receives fresh finish. This is one of the reasons I like to
use shellac for my sealer coat(s) when refinishing. Shellac has a tendency to really
bring the grain of the wood to life. More so than lacquer and lacquer sanding
sealers can. The board to the far right is the one that was glued to the
"spine" of the piano as mentioned in #9 above. This board was veneered in
mahogany on both sides. It was necessary to tear up the veneer on the under side as
the board was chiseled off the piano. However, this will all be made right before
the board is glued on again.
11) This picture has a lot of clamps in it so it is hard to see what is really going
on. The new pin block inserts have been indexed and matched to the plate. The
locations for the tuning pin holes have been marked and drilled at the bench drill press.
Now that the inserts are done, they are being glued into the piano. The
bottom of each hole that receives the inserts gets a coat of aliphatic resin glue.
However, the sides of the holes receive an epoxy that is special for its ability to cure
very hard and stable. It also has excellent adhesive properties with wood.
This is used because some of the tuning pin holes that are very near the edges of the
inserts need to be retained very firmly and completely. The depth of these inserts
is so great that it would be impossible to get them in and out of the holes during
manufacture unless there were a certain amount of space between the insert and the hole
that receives it. This epoxy is used because it glues the insert to the piano, and
at the same time fills all voids so completely and solidly that the inserts are as one
with the rest of the piano. The final assembly is actually stronger than the
original was the day it left the factory. In this picture, the inserts are being
held in place by clamps. You also see that the sound board has finished drying and
has received new spruce shims in all the cracks that were in the board. The drying
process is used to widen these cracks a bit as well as to force the board to crack in any
places that are "about" to crack. In this way, it should be a long time
before any new cracks form, since the piano was taken down to a lower humidity than it is
ever likely to see once it is placed back into service.
12) This is a close up of the shimmed sound board. Some of the shorter shims
could be driven into place and left like that. They stayed where they were driven.
However, the longest shim was too long to stay in place until the glue dried.
Therefore, a clamping assembly was put on the piano and a caul was driven into
place to hold the shim firmly down until the glue could set up. The reason that long
shims don't want to stay in place is because a piano sound board is not flat. It is
made in the form of a gentle crown. This crown was increased by me by driving wedges
between the back of the sound board and the back posts of the piano. This forces
additional crown into the sound board during the shimming process. Once the shims
have dried, the wedges will be removed. If all goes well, this method of shimming
will help to increase the tension inside the sound board and perhaps add a bit of the
crown that was lost as the piano aged. There was still crown in the board but not as
much as when the board was new. Now there is a bit more crown. For more
information on sound board construction, follow this
link to watch a new sound board being built in this shop.
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13) This picture shows the piano just after the clamps had been removed. You
can see the dark color of the epoxy that squeezed out of the joints of the pin block
inserts. This squeeze out will be cleaned away. You can also clearly see the
new spruce shims that have been installed to repair the cracks that were in the sound
board.
14) The sound board shims are being planed flush with the sound board.
15) The old finish has been scraped from the sound board and the sides of the
bridges. The tops of the bridges require more detailed attention.
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16) The keybed has been placed temporarily into its cradle in the piano case so that
the small amount of finish that is on it can be scraped off without damaging all the
linkages on the bottom of it. One way to do this would have been to remove all these
linkages, but, with careful treatment, taking them off isn't necessary and saves a great
deal of time.
