Monday, July 19, 2010

Day 36 – Sunday, July 18 – Veneer not far

Goals: Mount the veneer; get the piano back on its legs.

Music: Nat ‘King’ Cole’s “After Midnight”; Eddie ‘Lockjaw’ Davis’ “Very Saxy”; Miles Davis’ “Birth of the Cool”; Jimmy Giuffre’s “Free Fall”.

Another first today, as I installed my first piece of veneer ever. I bought the good kind (toxic kind) of contact cement for the job, so with the plastic up over the doors, I shut the air conditioner vent and opened the windows and turned on the fan. Here's the piano and the veneer at the start of the project:

The cement went on pretty easily and because the veneer was a good bit larger than the back of the piano all the way around, I was able to leave enough of the edges clear that Mrs. S and I could handle the material without gluing it to our hands. We weren’t quite ready for the veneer to stick as easily as it did, so we didn’t have it quite as tight as I would have liked, but when I pressed it down with the ‘J’ roller, all but one of the bubbles disappeared. I cut it opened and reglued it, and it looks sort of rough, but I’m pretty sure when I do the stain that it will look just fine. I cut the edges off with my Dremel, and sanded everything smooth, even and with rounded edges to compensate for the increased height of the veneer, and now, even with the bubble patch, it looks one-thousand percent better. And after all, it’s the back of the piano. Here's the result:

While the veneer was setting, I trimmed the soundboard crack shims and sanded them smooth. I had to redo one of the large cracks because it didn’t take for whatever reason, and I ended up having a little gap left over. I was going to fill it with wood filler, but decided against that. Instead, I’m just going to leave it and count on the strings and harp to cover it up enough that nobody will really notice. I still also have the varnishing to do, and that should help with the appearance of the cracks as well.

I closed out the day by reattaching the legs. Because I inserted the screw dowels with just a little twist to them to tighten them against the piano’s underside, and because I painted and patched the underside, only two of the four legs went on smoothly. For one of the other two legs, I had to scrape off some of the wood filler that I put on the bottom (which in hindsight was a mistake, because it isn’t visible anyway, being in between the leg and the piano bottom). For the other, I had to sand it like four or five times to finally get it to fit, and I had to bang the crap out of it, injuring my hand in the process. But with the legs on, I had Mrs. S pull out the sawhorses and we set the piano on the floor once again. After sitting up on those thirty inch sawhorses for the last month, the piano looked positively tiny when it was lowered back down to the floor. I’m sure it will look massive again in a few days, but right now, it does not.

Next phase is going to have to be to get the harp in shape, because I need to start working on the lid panels. Those will have to be done in stages, and there are three of them, so the sooner I start on them, the sooner I can have them finished. That means I need to finish up the harp to free up my sawhorses. I also will not be able to avoid the felt work and inlay work much longer. Although some things are getting done, there is still much to do.

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