Restoration by destruction

I want to buy a real piano. In order to do that, I need real space. Since I can’t sell the square grand I 90% restored, I've decided to dismantle it. Careful readers of this blog will recall my intention to turn the monster into a bar, but I've started considering another idea: I may do a digital conversion and shove my Yamaha P-70 into the Stone square grand case. The first phase for either project is dismantling and gutting the piano. For my bar idea, I want to preserve the keys, maybe even seal them in acrylic to use as a glass holder or something. If I do a digital conversion, however, the keys become redundant. Anyway, if I do keep the keys, I’ll cut off the long bits underneath to make space in the cabinet if it ends up being a bar.

My innocent square grand piano, awaiting its fate

I’m going to be much more careful about the destruction part, too, if that makes any sense. I plan to write a “how to” manual on restoring and converting square grands, so this is my road map back to realizing that potential. Who knows? Electronic publication may lead to sales that allow me to recover some of my investment in the resulting fiasco.

Yeah, I’m going to start this weekend. I’m excited.

Days 88 and 89 – Saturday and Sunday, May 28 and 29 – Looks like a piano!

Goals: Finish with the leather on the hammers and install the keys

Music: Shelley Manne and His Men’s “Complete Live at the Blackhawk” (all four discs).

With the keys inserted back in the piano, it again looks like a piano and the temptation to chop it into a desk or a bar is reduced. As has been the case throughout this project, however, the piano continues to beset me with “good news, bad news” scenarios:

-Good news: I successfully manufactured a replacement hammer from scrap hammers purchased online. Bad news: I wasn’t actually missing a hammer. The space on the hammer assembly is for something else. (Wish I knew what.) At least that explained why I ended up one piece of leather short when I was adding leather to the hammers.

-Good news: I successfully rebuilt the pivot arm end of a broken hammer. Bad news: The difference in shape and size is just enough that the wippen didn’t pick it up and project the hammer correctly. Hard to believe when you look at the photo – we’re talking a fraction of a millimeter difference! (I ended up shimming the whole assembly to make it work; it still joined the ranks of dead keys after the first go around.)

Top is the replacement, bottom is an original. Yeah, they're different, but...

-Good news: I finished putting the leather on all the hammers. Bad news: Even with careful and thorough trimming, the tiny size differential makes many of the keys stick, both against each other and against parts of the piano when the keys are reinserted.

Hammers all covered in leather and ready to go.

The pile of leather chunks that took be two days to trim from the heads - and they still don't work right.

-Good news: I was able to insert the keys and a number of them actually hit on the strings they were supposed to and made a passable sound. Bad news: After playing once through the keyboard, any number of keys went dead, or took some jiggling to get playing again, or didn’t sound at all in the first place.

-Good news: The rough tuning of the piano means I have actually gotten a reasonable facsimile of harmonic sound from the strings. Bad news: Not realizing that some of the “single” bass strings were actually “double” bass strings, I’ve got the piano tuned to play more notes than there are keys.

Good news: At the lower end of the keyboard, all the keys work. Bad news: The ones that are supposed to be hitting double strings are only hitting one string. (Maybe it doesn’t matter if I tune them or not.

Memorial Day will be filled with tuning work and key adjustment. I’m even going to have to get my piano repair manual out and see what my options are with the wippens that aren’t triggering the keys right after I just fixed them. (I mean, of course I made sure all the keys were working before I reinserted them, but I didn’t think so many would go dead right out of the gate!)

One more: Good news: The soft pedal actually moves the damper assembly into position and deadens the hammer strike on the strings. Bad news: It doesn’t go back on its own. More adjustment! 

The learning process

Prior to jazz improv class on Monday night, I had a good look at the piano (Yamaha concert grand) and noticed how cleanly and how neatly the strings are wound around the tuning pins. They are even, precise and consistent, nothing at all like the eight pins I did on my piano. I also discovered that mine aren’t even wound in the right direction. (My wound coils are above the insertion point of the wire, not below it, like they are on the grand.) The only reason I strung the coils above the insertion point is because there didn’t seem to be enough room to do them below the wire. Then, all of a sudden, I remembered that we purchased a set of pins that was a quarter inch shorter than the pins that came out of the piano, and that when I drive the new pins in, it doesn’t leave enough room before the wire insertion hole to make two windings of wire without touching the harp and pressing down too hard on the bridges.

Damn. Here’s a shot of my predicament and my shoddy wire windings:

So, I’m going to have to buy the correct length pins. That gives me an opportunity, however, to get the plated ones that look fancier, which is what I really wanted in the first place, even though it leaves me out of pocket for the $68 I spent on the set of pins I’m not going to use (unless I undertake another piano renovation soon – and that’s not happening).

This has me thinking that the best way to complete the finishing work on the piano is just like I did this weekend: finish a small portion of the job as best I can, then check online, check my piano refurbishing book, and look around and think about it, then decide if that is the right way or not. Then I can undo the small portion of completed work rather easily and quickly if it is wrong, or, I can keep going with no progress lost in the meantime if I happen to guess right the first time around.

This has definitely been a learning process, but the piano is getting closer and closer to being finished. My realization of the wire situation even is likely to get me to work on the piano on a weeknight for the first time in a while.

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 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.)

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.

Day 1 – Monday, May 24:

Goal(s): Assess overall condition; note major issues that will need time, money, or tools to repair; do basic cleaning, superficial cleaning.

Music: Horace Silver’s “A Song For My Father”

We picked up the piano today. By the time I arrived at the owner’s house around 5:15, Jason and his assistant already had the pedals removed, the piano wrapped tightly in blankets held with straps, and they were in the process of removing the legs. They positioned the piano so that two legs on the diagonal were up on blankets so they could remove the other two legs after putting the piano on its side on a moving dolly. They had it out the door and ready to go by about 5:30.

We drove to our house and decided the best way to get the piano into the house would be through the garage, since it had the fewest steps (four) and didn’t require driving over any grass. I had put down padding, an old rug, and a large heavy duty tarp in the dining room, and they moved it there in short order, negotiating the stairs with the use of a 7-foot metal reinforced plywood ramp. The legs were marked rather cryptically, making finding the right one to go in each corner a little difficult. One of the legs had a loose dowel and I was completely out of wood glue and regular Elmer’s. In order to get the piano sitting properly, we needed to get that dowel to stay still so it could be screwed in properly. I managed the trick with about three toothpicks acting as shims or bushings. That leg will have to be removed and repaired properly, once I have the piano sitting up on whatever it is I’m going to have it sitting up on while I work on the underside.

When we got the top open and I played a few notes, I was amazed and delighted to find that the piano had “fallen into” tune. It still needs tuning and is quite rough sounding, but all of a sudden, it actually was playable. There is one broken string, one removed and relocated damper arm, one missing damper arm, and at least two dead keys, but other than that, everything is appearing to be pretty sound. I took some brass polish to the sound board and ended up taking some of the surface finish off. (I think. I didn’t look at it real good, so I can’t tell if I’m removing the finishing or getting down to the patina or whatnot. I stopped doing that until I could get an informed opinion.)

I ordered a professional tuning kit, a book on piano tuning and refurbishing, plus I picked up some sticky felt and caster cups on the way home last night prior to going to pick up the piano. Next step is going to be to remove the top and vacuum the whole thing out. Once my tuning wrench arrives, I plan to loosen all the strings and let them sit for a day or two. I want to see if my book addresses the issue of dealing with rusty pins and strings before I attempt to clean them. I have to remove the felt and get some new felt strips. I have to get a Dremel to work on the inlay. I’ll have to order some mother of pearl to finish the inlay. Haven’t decided if I’m going to keep the casters or do away with them. Not sure about replacing the strings either. I think I will take the sound board out to see what the frame looks like underneath, maybe clean and oil that. If I can get the top off without any problem, I’m going to sand that whole thing down and refinish it.

I have lots of ideas, but I really need a plan.