Piano Revisited

So, I need to follow up with some loose ends on the piano. And this post should probably include some photos too, Lord knows I have been taking them assiduously, following the good advice of those who know.

I mentioned not long ago that I am really trying to work with the piano (body and piano action) “as is” as much as possible. My focus is the player action rebuild, and I have explained why.
So now that the piano is all cleaned up and everything has been taken out for inspection, what did I find?

In summary (piano overall, not including player action components):

• Most parts worn, but remain fairly usable in current condition (this includes strings)
• Keys need cleaning, capstan polish, and bushings need “freshening” (see below)
• key frame pins (front and center pins) need polish and lube
• hammers need “carding” or filing to erase string grooves and help rebalance tone
• a few hammer brass butt plates to replace
• center pins (at least 4 sets: hammers, wips, stickers, dampers) need lubrication (wet)
• action contact points (e.g. sticker felts, damper lever spoon felts, butt leather) need lube (dry)
• damper felts likely need replacing, then regulating
• renew trapwork (replace all bearing bushings, and lube)
• alignment and tightening all action flanges
• complete regulation of keyboard and action
• other misc. (in my case bridge repair and case finish touch up –see below)
• lastly, tuning + voicing (TBD)

Just a reminder that (for the purposes of this project) I have opted to refurbish the piano, not rebuild or remanufacture it. But even though I am just doing a refurb job on this piano, you can see there is still a lot here – many hours of work ahead on this part!

Most of what I have outlined above is garden variety stuff, so I won’t elaborate too much there. I will just provide a few pics of the overall process:

rebushing 1
Rebushing the pedal rod guide blocks
rebushing 2
Rebushing done! Looks much nicer now
key levelling
Ready to polish and lube all guide pins
evening
Having a rest for the evening!

But then there were a couple of particular things which do bear mentioning. Regarding the butt plates: actions with this brass rail hammer system (common during the first part of the player era) may be in for a rude awakening, starting in the near future. After a century (or more), these brass rails and plates have stiffened over time; they are brittle and often weakened. They begin to break, one by one. The dwindling amount of piano suppliers do still stock these plates, but they are now considered “one size fits all”, which they actually don’t.

So if they don’t work with your rail, or if the rail teeth themselves start to break, well, you are rather snookered. Or at least seriously inconvenienced. If you can’t salvage other parts you may be in for a wholesale replacement and conversion of the rail to conventional hammers and flanges. This is not the end of the world, but again: not convenient. Fortunately I don’t have to deal with this at present.

There are some things that I am sliding on here, and on the fence about as well. In most cases pianos of this age need everything replaced, including all action felts (for example). In my case I am just going to massage/fluff them a little, with a bristle brush. Then a little dry lube (where necessary) to give them a powdery smoothness.

The dampers should also be replaced, but I am still deciding about that. They are functional but noticeably hard, which gives them an undesirable percussive sound when they reset. Probably will have to bite the bullet on this one.

In terms of regulation it won’t be possible to nail everything because we are not working with fresh parts. I can certainly calibrate it to a reasonable tolerance notwithstanding, but just be aware that complete regulation is best done with fresh parts.

A special note about regulating the keyboard on a player is that often the keys are weighted differently than on a standard piano. They are front-weighted so that they fall when a corresponding note is triggered by the player action. This lets the audience see the keys move along with the music, as if the piano were being played by a ghost. When during regulation the capstans must be adjusted, bear in mind that there will be no “lost motion” as they are pressing up into the wippens, due to the front-weighting. Make sure you make this adjustment before levelling your keys!

Bridge repair: the only belly work type-stuff I need to get into is some slight bridge repair. During the original manufacturing of the bridge, if the builder did not align the grain of the wood correctly, the pins went in to wood which was comparatively weaker. Fast-forward 100 years, and the pins have been deflecting string tension all that time! Sometimes the pins will start to tear out of their original holes, particularly toward the end of a bridge. This is ruinous to the speaking of the strings and tunability of the instrument.

bridge repair
Bridge repair: tear-out damage to upper pin holes

Fortunately, in my case the damage seems minimal. Just a half-dozen or so loose pins with enlarged holes. The thing for this is to loosen and tuck away the strings over that part of the bridge, take out the pins from the affected holes, mix-up some five-minute epoxy (put in glue syringe if available), fill the holes, clean up spillage, reinsert pins, clean some more. Double check spacing/alignment issues before the epoxy finishes setting up, and you’re done!

The rest of the piano-specific items are fairly garden variety, so those can be researched and discussed elsewhere.

Now, back to our regularly-scheduled programming!