Day 22 – Tuesday, June 22:

Goals: Start felt work; start finishing work.

Music: Barry Harris Trio’s “Magnificent”, Chet Baker’s “My Funny Valentine” collection (disk 8).

I really wanted to start on the felt work today, because the sooner I get the smaller pieces and apparatuses re-attached to the piano, the sooner I can stop tripping over them all the time. Problem is, I don’t quite have all the parts I need, and certain processes depend on other processes, which means I can’t necessarily just do what I want. I can only do certain jobs that are available within a limited linear flow.

At least, I couldn’t start on the felt, yet, because that needs to wait on some wood refinishing work. Instead, I decided (or had decided for me) to tackle some of the wood work.

Since I did not wish to make a huge mess and wasn’t in the mood to hang plastic doors to prevent dust moving throughout the house, I decided to try some steel wool on the sound board. It worked quite well and made only a small mess. It still requires a lot of elbow grease, but all-in-all, it’s a tolerable and effective way of cleaning up the wood, sometimes dramatically so.

In summary, I spent about an hour and twenty minutes on the piano, and just looking at it, it isn’t easy to tell anything has been done, but actually, it was rather a lot of progress for such a small investment in time, especially considering the amount of that type of work yet remaining.