Day 51 – Saturday, September 11 – Curses

Goals: Figure out what to do to make the lid portion look good

Music: Duke Ellington’s “Never No Lament” (disc 3), Duke’s “Newport 1956") (both discs)

Friday night, the management team and spouses from my company were having a send-off dinner for our boss of eight years. The topics ranged from golf, to fishing, to music, to the meaning of the letter ‘H’ in Japanese, to my piano. Several people asked how the renovation was going and when they might expect to hear it played. I told them honestly that of late, the project had not been going very well, and that I was leaning that when dealing with an antique piano, every time you make a little bit of progress, something comes and bites you in the ass. Typically, (I explained) when you try to fix something wood, it chips or cracks, and when you move something, a fitting or other part requires adjustment, screw holes don’t line up, wood doesn’t take stain, etc. etc. I recall I did not knock on wood at any point in the conversation. (I’m not sure the fiberboard of the Chinese restaurant’s table would have qualified anyway.)

So, on Saturday, I’m hard at work on the piano lid. I had been unhappy with the appearance of the first coat of stain, as I could clearly see the sander’s tracks in the old coating. So I decided to sand the hell out of the big board that was giving me the headache. Six pieces of sanding paper at three different grits and an hour later, I was left with a slightly more manageable mess, but I was not at all happy with how the board looked. The curse of retracing my steps is still not dissolved. In the back of my mind, I was thinking that I did not want to take a step backward on this project, and that I shouldn't have done anything with the sander and just lived with the result. The curse of regret, again.

But the can of chemical stripper was calling to me.

I took out the stripper, applied a liberal coat, and scraped away most of my problems. The veneer came off in a few places, but I rescued the pieces for regluing later. I decided to do the back and the other two pieces with the stripper as well. And that’s what I spent the rest of the afternoon on. Here’s the result:

Three uncoated lid panels – shiny spots still need scraping, bright spots need veneer repair

One cut (thumb) and one missing skin chunk (disinfected very nicely with highly acidic tri-phosphate wash)

Some chemical burns when a panel almost fell off the sawhorses.

Things should go better today. I think the curse on the piano is finally starting to wear off.