I have succeeded in removing the sound board from the piano. I don’t know if every square grand piano from the 1800’s was built like mine, but this piano is a very robust piece of furniture. As I said in an earlier entry, the screws are not what holds the piano parts together, it’s glue. And not just any glue: natural animal hide glue made from connective tissue (skin, tendons, ligaments, hooves) of animals (usually horses). This stuff gets down into the grain of the wood, adheres to the wood on a cellular level, then hardens into a chunk. Good luck pulling apart any two pieces of wood bound with this stuff after it dries. In fact, the only thing that is saving me during this project is the wood of my piano is so dried out, it splinters and fragments all around the glue, more or less allowing me to separate everything piece by piece.
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| It's not history, but it's mine. |
As for the sound board itself, it too fragmented at crucial junctures, and once it had loosened, I was able to pry it out. It is another impressive piece of work. Heartening was the fact that my varnish job was as solid as the original varnish job. I used authentic ‘spar’ varnish and when pieces of the sound board cracked and splintered, pointy little “nails” of hardened varnish flew everywhere, sharp as needles. Again, when they were building these pianos back in the day, they really knew what they were doing.
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| Check out the spar varnish splintering, bottom right... |
Once the sound board was removed, I was able to see the entire inside of the piano case in the light of day for the first time. A small glimmer in a pile of detritus caught my eye, and lo and behold, good news is, it’s money. Bad news is, it was just a dime. Good news is it’s a silver dime (1957). Bad news is, there’s nowhere left for money to be hiding in my piano case.
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| Animal ligaments are strong? Well, stronger than wood, anyway! |
Tonight, Mrs. S and I are going to put the piano up on saw horses so I can remove the legs. Then Mrs. S and I are going to see if she is strong enough to hold up one end of the empty case so that she and I can move it ourselves. (She doesn’t know any of this yet.) If not, I’ll need to recruit some bodies to move the thing out to the garage for the hollowing out for the digital conversion or bar (depending on how the hollowing out goes). I have an oscillating power tool that I received from Amazon and haven’t written a review for yet, so I’m using this project to kill two birds with one stone. I’m sure hollowing out an antique piano is more than sufficient enough to put a cutting and sanding tool through its paces.
This project is taking shape rapidly and smoothly, and I’m still joyous and inspired as the work progresses. How could I not be?
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