Day 41 – Saturday, July 31 – I want to quit harping on this

Goals: Finish the harp; do any job that is still open that is preventing me from re-installing the harp; continue with the felt work.

Music: Miles Davis’ “The Complete ‘In a Silent Way’ Sessions” (disc 1); Chick Corea’s “The Ultimate Adventure”; Chick Corea with Gary Burton’s “The New Crystal Silence” (both discs) and “Crystal Silence”.

After a week where a messed up work schedule that completely altered my work hours (and my sleep hours) kept me from working on the piano, I was anxious to get back to it. I especially wanted to finish up the harp and get it out of the way, as I’m really just tired of looking at it in the garage. So I got up early Saturday to beat the heat and I spray painted it gold. (I had already prepped it by taping the pins and agraffes.) It has a few rough spots, but the overall appearance is fine. I’ll touch it up when I paint between the pins with a fine brush and some touch up paint.

So, rather than prop the harp against the wall, I thought I would go ahead and put it back in the piano. I then thought, well, I’d better try and think of a reason why I shouldn’t put it back; there must be some job I’m forgetting and I’ll have to take the sucker out again. And there was: I still have to remove the two broken screws from the two center holes, a job that creates a lot of metal dust, as I’m basically just grinding them up in the holes they are in. In surveying that job, I realized that the hitch pin blocks could be cleaned up some, especially the corrosion on the pins themselves. I got my Dremel out and took care of that first, creating quite a mess and requiring varnishing of the pin blocks. I cleaned up with a tack cloth and since I had to varnish the pin blocks, I decided to do another coat on the entire soundboard.

All that took all morning. The photo above shows a portion of the cleaned hitch pin block and what it looked like before cleaning.

In the afternoon, I removed all the damper arms from the damper assembly, removed all the damper felt from the damper arms, ground off the remaining glue and felt remnants from the damper arms, removed the felt pads and spacers from the damper rods (photo above shows three of them), separated the felt from the spacers, and cleaned and polished the rods. (There are 61 damper arms and rods, by the way.) That took all afternoon and one recharging of the Dremel’s battery.

I’ll probably want to start on the vintage stool that I bought recently, too. It’s rough, as the photo above shows.

I expect Sunday will be another full day.