Day 6 – Monday, May 31 – Success!

Goals: Remove the strings; remove the tuning pins, remove all the last of the screws holding down the sounding board/pin frame; remove the frame; clean up the inside.

Music: Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s “Rip, Rig, and Panic”; Bill Holman’s “The Original Bill Holman Band” (both disks); Ahmad Jamal’s “Cross Country Tour” (both disks); Dexter Gordon’s “Go”; Bill Frisell’s “Have a Little Faith”; and Stan Getz’s “Focus”. (Yes, that’s about eight hours’ worth of music, because that’s about how long I worked on the piano yesterday.)

Started off by continuing with the string removal. This was deceptively difficult, not only because the strings are so brittle and rusted onto to the pins, but also because I attempted to keep the strings in some kind of order for possible future reference. What makes this hard is the curly ends of each string, which I kept in case I have to refer to the length of any of the wires in the future. I can’t imagine I would, but never having done this before, I’m just not sure how important that is. But those curled up ends all gathering at about the same location can really get infernally tangled, and they catch on everything: each other, parts of the pianos, tools laying around the piano, my clothes, and stuff hanging in the garage where I attempted to hang the strings. Toward the end, with the little strings that just kept breaking anyway and where I was missing one to begin with – and because my patience had run out, I admit – I just cut all the ends off. Note, however, that I didn’t have a choice, because those upper end strings are run through a sort of holder through which the curled end never would have passed anyway. So, I did what I could, but had the strings off by lunch time.

Then I started on the tuning pins. Seeing that I would have to slide the frame to get it out from under the front edge of the piano, I knew they had to all come out. My piano has 85 keys, only eleven of which consist of one string. That’s one hundred and fifty nine tuning pins. As I took them out, I put them in little trays in groups of 20 sprayed thoroughly in WD-40 and stored that way. Although I finally took out that last pin at about 8:30 in the evening, I ran out of WD-40 and had to just line up the pins for storing this evening, as I will buy some more on the way home tonight.

With the pins out and the screws out, I tried to lift the frame, but it wouldn’t budge. There was one kind of cap looking thing right in the center, which upon further examination turned out to be holding the frame on some kind of screw. I removed that. Finally I could lift the frame, but I banged into the pins sticking in the side of the piano that hold the arms that support the top when it is open for playing. I removed those four pins. I lifted one end of the frame and set it on the side of the piano. I lifted the other and moved it over and the far end dropped right down on the sound board, nicking a pin block on the way down but fortunately, missing the pins and doing no damage to the soundboard. I went out to the garage and got a bunch of plastic tool holders that I had and they were just the right height and strength to put under individual sections of the frame so that eventually, the frame sat above the piano about two inches, supported along its entire length by these tool holders.

Now make no mistake: this frame is frigging heavy. I’d guess in the neighborhood of 100 pounds. But what makes it so hard to move is that it is six feet long and it is not perfectly rectangular. I decided my best bet was to slide it out of the piano. I went to the garage and got our old carpet runner and set that at one end of the piano. I started to slide the frame but quickly realized I was going to tear up the wood at one end of the piano if I wasn’t careful. I went and got a couple of old towels and covered the edge of the piano, and slowly, carefully, determinedly, lowered the frame to the floor. I had Mrs. S. takes pictures before the elation wore off.

I started to wipe down the soundboard and noticed that it has cracked in at least two locations, luckily, both at the edges of the soundboard and not very severely. I should be able to repair them pretty easily. The book on piano refurbishing that I bought has an extensive section on repairing soundboards, as this is a pretty common repair.

Next will be the legs and pedal assembly. I bought a pair of sawhorses to support the piano on so I can remove the legs and pedal stuff. I’m still undecided how deep inside the piano I want to go. I need to look at it some more tonight.

I bought a special key cleaner and will use that to determine if I need to replace the keys or not. I asked the guy to send me a sample of the replacement keys he sells as well, but I’m not sure he’s going to send them to me. I guess I should also start working on the damper assembly and the soft pedal assembly, or at least, I need to be shopping for leather and felt for replacing those parts. There is still so much work to do.

So Memorial Day was by far the toughest and longest day so far in my piano project, but it was certainly the most rewarding. You can tell by my face as I stand next to my “trophy”, even with the eight day shadow.

Day 6 – Sunday, May 30:

Goals: Remove the pin block frame, whatever it is; finish repair of bench

Music: Bill Evans’ “Everybody Digs Bill Evans”

Finished with the bench. Installed my fabricated bottom, reattached the legs, tightened everything down, and now I have my little box to hold all the parts of the piano I strip off of it, not to mention somewhere to sit while working inside the piano.

More importantly, I finally got all the screws out of the pin block frame. It turns out that the one that was giving me all the trouble is actually an 8.5” long jobbie that connects the pin block frame to the bottom of the piano through the soundboard. It was pretty well rusted in place, but I scraped everything free at the top, banged on it a few times to shake it loose, hammer-and-chiseled at it with the small screwdrivers, and finally put everything I had into the big screwdriver and ever so slowly loosened it and got it out. I immediately cleaned it with WD-40, as I think it quite unlikely I’ll ever be able to find a replacement for that screw. Here's a shot of that screw next to the hole I removed it from.

Then, I found one more screw that I missed and after removing it, tried to lift the pin block frame, but it appears to me that the tuning pins attach to the soundboard through the pin block frame, meaning that I have to remove the strings in order to remove the pin block frame. Oh well. We’re back to having to do a complete refurbishment anyway, so in the evening, I started to remove the strings. I’ve managed to take off eight so far.

Thanks to the shortened square piano keyboard, only 77 more to go. Memorial Day 2010 will be more memorable than most for me, if I manage to extract the frame.

Day 5 – Saturday, May 29:

Goals: Remove the pin block/sound board, whatever it is; repair the bench

Music: The Teddy Charles Tentet; Wynton Marsalis Quartet’s “The Magic Hour”

I worked a little bit on taking the bench apart. Mostly spent the time finding a board to replace as the bottom and settled on peg board that I had out in the garage. I glued a sheet of textured brown paper to it to cover the holes. Tomorrow I’ll be able to put it in and reassemble the bench. After that, I won’t do any more work on it.

I spent a good portion of my time removing the trim that was in the way of removing the frame. It came up rather easily, as the glue was all dried out and the brads are all rusted. I even managed to remove all the pieces intact. Almost. The long six foot piece was coming right out when suddenly, one of the brads decided to grab just as I pulled. It sent a shock wave down the length of the piece and broke it in two places. After I get the wood in decent shape, I’ll glue it back together, but I may end up just replacing that trim with my own bits of fancy trim. (The big screw is the one just north of the screwdriver handle in this photo.)

The rest of the time on the piano, about three hours total, was spent pulling screws out of the cast iron frame. It was a bear. One screw broke off. Another turns but doesn’t come out. The large screw in the front with a special place in the frame wouldn’t budge, not an inch. I banged and dripped WD-40 into it, but it just won’t move. I wore myself out trying. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll get it.

Day 4 – Friday, May 28:

Goals: Continue trying to free the soundboard from the piano. Clean what can be cleaned. Tune it one time at the right pitch.

Music: The Crystal Method’s “Community Service”; Moby’s “Play”; The Crystal Method’s “Legion of Boom”

My tuning hammer arrived, and I was of a mind to see if I could tune the piano properly. Unfortunately, the mutes that were supposed to be in the “kit” did not arrive. I made an attempt to tune the piano without them, but it was decidedly more difficult than I anticipated. The smallest turn of the tuning pin can make a difference of three, four, or more notes. Without the mutes, I’m pretty sure it would be basically impossible to tune a piano unless one was an expert. At any rate, I didn’t have the patience last night, and since I’m taking the piano apart anyway, I gave up the tuning idea until after I figure out what to do with the old strings. (I don’t think they are salvageable.)

As a sort of warm up, I worked a little bit on the bench that came with the piano. I swear to God I pulled forty or fifty nails, staples and screws out of that sucker just to remove the sagging bottom that wasn’t holding anything anyway. I’m sure I’ve got a serviceable piece of wood somewhere that will make a better bottom when I reattach it. I oiled the wood to perfection and will attempt that simple repair at the next session.

For the rest of the evening, I grabbed up my big honking slotted magnetic screwdriver and had at the pin block (what I’ve been calling the soundboard), trying to remove the screws holding it down. I decided it would be a good idea to track those screws, since they might have something to do with the leveling of the pin block, so I also had to draw a pin diagram. Even with the big-ass screwdriver, I couldn’t get some of the screws to budge, so I tracked down my can of WD-40. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the little tube that goes in the nozzle allowing you to focus the spray and since I didn’t want WD-40 all over my piano, I got me a piece of foil and built a little collector/funnel and dripped a good amount of WD-40 over and around each of the screws. I also loosened all the strings, to allow me to get at all the screws, including the ones under the strings.

Just that took the majority of the evening, almost three full hours of work. I’ve got less than a quarter of the pin block’s screws removed, so that’s going to be my focus today (May 29).

Day 3 – Thursday, May 27

(Piano lesson on Wednesday, gave myself and the piano a break for a day)
Goals: Vacuum out the inside of the body; commission the fabrication of the missing damper arm; measure and record the diameter of all the strings; read through or test out any materials or tools that arrive today (not expecting many, but my tuning/refurbishing book is a good candidate, as is my Dremel tool).

Music: Chico Freeman’s “Destiny’s Dance”; The Crystal Method’s “Community Service II”

I gave the damper arms to “MB”, the guy at work who has his own woodshop. He’s going to see if he can buy some Brazilian rosewood from some place and then manufacture that missing damper arm.

I figured out how to remove the damper arm assembly and its cover, the cover having two small removable heads to hold it in place, with the damper assembly having only one hand-tightened nut to hold it into a frame. I swung up all the damper arms on the assembly, and after vacuuming it, revealed a bright red piece of felt padding. Exciting.

With the damper assembly gone, I was able to clean underneath and around the strings much more easily. Using an old rag and lemon oil, I could also wipe away a lot of the dust and give the soundboard wood a bit of luster back. The more I looked at the piano, the more I learned. Not only do I now understand the damper assembly, but I understand how the pedal raises up the damper assembly to allow the notes to sound continuously. I also found out how the soft pedal works (by shifting a board with felt and leather tabs between the hammers and the strings). While there are many delicate and time consuming jobs I am finding having to do with replacing felt, gluing parts in place and whatnot, I have yet to find any job that is going to be difficult, per se.

So, last night I started to look at how to get at the sound board. There is some decorative trim all around it, basically extending wherever it can attach to two pieces of wood at a 90-degree angle. There was one small piece of this wood, attached with long-since-gone-brittle glue and two rusted brads. I separated the glued edge with a screwdriver (slowly, since the wood is as brittle as the glue), and pulled the brads out. It looks to my untrained eyes that those pieces of trim are not native to the piano. I really think they were added later. Since I already commented on how I noticed the soundboard had been painted in faux brass, I started looking much more closely at the piano. Again, to my untrained eyes, it appears the mother-of-pearl inlay feature was also added at a later date. I think this is true because I had the idea to do an inlay in the “C. H. Stone & Co.” letters, but happened to notice that someone had already started to chip away at it. And they stopped.

In short, I’m pretty sure that somebody was trying to turn this piano into something else and they just gave up. This tells me two things. One: I have an opportunity to turn this piano into an "original classic" by restoring it and fixing up the added features. Two: I can do whatever sort of restoration work I want on this thing, because I haven't got as much to lose if I was working on, say, and all original Steinway. So I don’t have to worry about replacing obsolete hinges, or using the same wire, or anything like that. I can basically have at the thing, add high quality, modern, beautiful parts, and whatever I end up with, it should be fine. Right there, I’m going to be saving some money on custom made hinges. (I think long piano hinges look better anyways.)

The better part of the evening, after vacuuming, I spent wiping inside and out with lemon oil. The finish is definitely getting better and the piano is definitely looking better. I’m sure the moisture is a big positive. I started to try and tackle some of the screws holding down the soundboard, but they are these honking half-inch slotted monsters and I couldn’t generate enough torque with a regular screwdriver to even budge them. The next day I bought a driver at lunchtime that I think will allow me to do the job. I also picked up heavy duty wire cutters and a small screwdriver with a regular handle that I should be able to grind down into a super narrow, sharp head that I can use on any more tiny screws I find (and any I might use to put the piano back together).

I read my Dremel manual at lunch and I’m ready to go with that. I’ve got my piano refurbishing book. All I need now is my tuning kit, which could possibly be arriving today (May 28).

Memorial Day weekend will start off with me going to fire a gun for the first time in my life. The rest of the weekend is all about selling stuff on e-bay and working on my piano. (I need to give it a name pretty soon.)

A day off from refurbishing to give away free music

I took a day off from refurbishing the piano, but yesterday, I really went at it for a good three hours and I learned a lot that I'm looking forward to sharing with everybody. After I write that up, I'll be sure and post it.

In the meantime, here's a free MP3 from The Innkeeper's Gun, the new John Goldsby trio album that I recently reviewed. I promise you'll love it, and hey, it's free, so what have you got to lose? Check it out.

If you want the rest of the MP3 album, you can download The Innkeeper's Gun from amazon. It's good, I'm telling, ya. Would I lie to you?

Day 2 – Tuesday, May 25:

Goal: Remove the top.

Music:Wayne Shorter’s “Speak No Evil”; Herbie Hancock’s “Maiden Voyage”

I had a lunch meeting today that luckily enough was held within shouting distance of the local home improvement store.  And although it is a little early in the project, since I had already assessed the need for wood glue (for the dowel in the left front leg) and super glue (for the mother of pearl inlay), I went ahead and picked them up. (I also, riding on my recent, “I can do it myself” wave, replaced and installed our sprinkler system control panel. Five of six stations now work, with the fault on the sixth being in the underground wire, not something I could have fixed anyway.)

So today’s goal was basically to remove the top so that I can get inside and start cleaning and working on the piano. My original idea was to note and save the location of every single screw that I removed, but after realizing how much extra, probably needless, work that would be, I decided against it. It also sort of didn’t matter almost right away, as one of the screws disintegrated when I tried to remove it. Several of the hinges were bent, all of the screws were in pretty rough shape, so in short order, I decided that I would be replacing all of the hinges with new ones. I still kept the hinges and screws separated from each other, based on which of the top’s panels they held.

There was a big chunk of wax melted onto the center bottom of the middle panel which naturally left some portion of itself and some residue on the front panel. It’s hard to tell if that was by design to act as some kind of padding or if somebody unintelligently allowed a candle to drip into that gap and just more or less forgot about it. Long story short, I scraped it away as best I could. If I put anything there in its place when I reassemble the piano, it will likely be a felt pad or wooden plug of some kind.

There were several small felt pads on the front panel to support it above the front of the wood panel underneath the keyboard. I noted their size and position photographically.

While I was working on the front and mid-panel dismantling, I put some mayonnaise on the water rings, scratches, and other wear marks on the rear panel, as I read on the Internet that mayonnaise was good for that sort of thing and you had to let it sit for about an hour. Surprisingly, this really worked well in covering up some of the minor damage and restoring some luster to the other damaged spots. I then added a little lemon oil and rubbed real good and got that panel looking halfway respectable. It also helped clean the body of the piano, especially the back where the veneer is cracking because of warping and damage. (Not sure what, if anything, I can do about that. I have no plans to replace the veneer at this point.)

So the only other thing I have to note is that the small felt pads are 11” and 23” from the hinge side of back panel, on the underside, to keep that above the frame.

My tuner arrived yesterday and I messed with it just enough to learn that the piano is tuned an entire two notes above concert pitch. No wonder the strings are so tight. I’m going to learn how to use my tuner today at lunch. My tuning wrench and kit should be in my hands by Friday, as they shipped yesterday.

Newly assessed need in addition to the replacement hinges is a long-handled minus screwdriver with a thin head and a good pair of wire cutters that can handle very old, hard, and thick piano wire.

Next goal: Vacuum the hell out of the inside. I also removed the damper arms from either side of the one that was missing and plan to see if I can get that fabricated in the next week or so. I’ll have to go wool padding and felt shopping pretty soon, too.