Yesterday I spent lots and lots of time polishing the pins on the piano. Which pins? Well, the pins that the keys pivot on. Was it necessary? Not really but I want the restoration to be as thorough as possible. You know sometimes you wish you'd not started a job!?! Wow, it's really slow going. However, I shouldn't really be surprised as all of the reference books I've read about piao restoration state very clearly that it really does take a lot of time. They're right!
The process involves removing all of the pins in the frame and individually sanding them with a very fine grade sandpaper until the steel shines through again. Finally you hammer them back into the frame. However, to do a thorough job it is estimated to take around 5 minutes per pin. Multiply that by 88 (the number of keys on a piano) and that's 440 minutes or 7 hours 20 minutes. That's what you call slow going!!! Will it be worth it at the end? OF COURSE! lol.
As you'll understand, I relatively soon lost interest in doing that particular job so have decided to do it in small blasts of maybe 10 pins at a time. However, that doesn't mean I didn't do anything else instead. Today I've been working on the restoration of the keys. Lots of the ivory had started to come loose so I spent a couple of hours sorting through the keys to find which were in need of restoration. Once they were located I cleaned the old glue off the old connection and then re-glued. However, I'm not entirely sure it has worked as yet as the glue seemed to be taking an age to go off.
Settling down for a night of cleaning the house as we're expecting a friend visiting tomorrow providing the snow doesn't stop it happening. Speaking of the snow... Isn't it marvellous!!!
The process involves removing all of the pins in the frame and individually sanding them with a very fine grade sandpaper until the steel shines through again. Finally you hammer them back into the frame. However, to do a thorough job it is estimated to take around 5 minutes per pin. Multiply that by 88 (the number of keys on a piano) and that's 440 minutes or 7 hours 20 minutes. That's what you call slow going!!! Will it be worth it at the end? OF COURSE! lol.
As you'll understand, I relatively soon lost interest in doing that particular job so have decided to do it in small blasts of maybe 10 pins at a time. However, that doesn't mean I didn't do anything else instead. Today I've been working on the restoration of the keys. Lots of the ivory had started to come loose so I spent a couple of hours sorting through the keys to find which were in need of restoration. Once they were located I cleaned the old glue off the old connection and then re-glued. However, I'm not entirely sure it has worked as yet as the glue seemed to be taking an age to go off.
Settling down for a night of cleaning the house as we're expecting a friend visiting tomorrow providing the snow doesn't stop it happening. Speaking of the snow... Isn't it marvellous!!!
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