Yes, I'm still here!

I hope you didn't think you'd been forsook... Or is it forsaken? Depends which century you're in I suppose. I do know that Purcell used the word forsook in Dido and Aeneas but I suppose that could be old English now. ANYWAY you've not been either forsaken or forsook. I bet you're glad that's out of the way!

So, although I've been pretty quiet over the summer when it has come to the Blogging lark, there have been one or two things going on in the meantime.

As I stated in one or two earlier posts, my mate, Steve has been very helpful in the process. As a matter of fact, helpful is nowhere near strong enough a word to describe what he's done.

As Steve is a very, very good carpenter he has been working on building the wrestplank or pin block or whatever you want to call it. Basically, if you've not read the earlier posts of the blog, it's the bit of wooden plank that the tuning pins screw into. The plank has to be of a very strong and stable wood. After lots of research, I decided not on Delignit as most places seem to recommend but on beech instead. Although Delignit is, no doubt very good there were a few problems with it. Mostly getting the bloody stuff. It's easier getting hold or rocking horse turds than getting hold of that stuff. Anyway, after deciding on the beech, Steve went off to Penrith to his supplier and started making the laminates that make up the board. The board needs to be 1.5" thick. As the piano was originally built in imperial measurements, Steve has also decided to work in that way too. So, here's how Steve did it...

What you see is a jig that the individual laminates sit on. The jig ensures that the plank is ABSOLUTELY flat. That's very important. We don't want a bowed bit of wood that's meant to be straight do we?

Steve used a contact adhesive which is very, very strong indeed. In fact, it went off so quickly that he struggled to get the laminates together quickly enough. Nevertheless he managed so far and also so far it is very successful. Obviously, he's not finished yet as the holes need to be drilled as well as it being fitted (exactly) to the frame.

After doing my little bit of restoration work on the bridge, I wasn't happy with it so removed what I'd done. I'm now going to redo that which, despite being very slow-going, it actually very easy.

Today I went into the garage to see what small job I could undertake. I didn't fancy busting a gut so decided to take one of the legs off; the back one if you're interested, and did the usual nitromorse. I took a couple of photographs of the before and after stripping so you can see the huge improvement. I was very pleased with the results and I'm sure you can understand why.

From the photos you'll see that there was a very tired, old brass castor. You should have seen how difficult it was to get that off. Eventually I resorted to a hammer and the flat edge of a screwdriver. not a good idea but it did work without leaving a mark, which amazed me. Once again, the rest of the day was set aside to do what only I, a former trainee clockmaker can do so well. The brasso came out and was used for the next two hours or so. I've just got to laquer the brass which is easy to do and that's that one done. So, two down, one to go!

A few weeks ago I tried to remove some of the paint on the frame of the piano. It wasn't really very successful. I'm wondering if I should hire a sandblaster or something. Yes, it'll be pretty heavy-duty but in the longrun will be far more effective at getting the required removal of paint as well as being very quick indeed. I'll have to research again I think. If it's more than £50 or so I'll be going back to the drawing board on that idea. maybe I'll just sit with my bucket and spade and flick individual grains at it between my finger and thumb until it's all done. I'm sure it won't take too long to do it that way.

Oh, and I hope you like my slippers in the last piccy!!!

Gaining momentum

As is my usual habit, I've been trawling the internet looking at stuff that is pretty much pointless. However, I did stumble across a company that make the world's largest production pianos. Bosendorfer make a 9'6" "Imperial" grand with the extra black notes at the bottom that has been the world's largest production instrument. Well, the Rubenstein R-371 is the piece in question. What do you think of it? (If I'm infringing copryright by publishing the image, just let me know and I'll remove it... however, if I increase sales I'll expect commission!!!)

So, the piano work is starting to get going again after my recovery of that horrible thing that gets in the way of life... work.

Earlier this week I decided that I wasn't happy after all with the finish of the soundboard as it just didn't "do it" for me. Out came the sandpaper again and I did a good bit of rubbing down as you'd expect - I'm not likely to get sandpaper out to make a Victoria sponge am I? After dealing with the sanding I worked on removing the finish from the bridges. This wasn't particularly easy due to the awkward angles in the construction of the bridge. After a good bit of contortion I managed to clear them of all of the varnish. Off I went (YET AGAIN ) to B&Q. As a matter of course I got the usual, some new brushes, just in case, some more sandpaper (you can never have too much) as I've got the wonderful habit of putting it somewhere safely so I don't lose it and then can't find it; only to discover it once I've been out to buy some more. Oh, and I got some clear varnish too, of course!

The clear varish went on a treat. I was very pleased with the way it laid as an application. So far I've done two VERY thin coats. I just hate streaky varnish on an item. It makes it look like an amateur piece of work - which it is - but I don't want everyone to know... Just the three billion people on the globe with internet access.

The next thing on the agenda, which will be happening very soon, is to start work on the iron frame. Or, as it is called in USA, the plate. I think frame is better myself so that's what I'll call it.

Anyway, the plate has been removed for a good while and has been standing against the garage wall (inside, obviously) since about March. It is very tall measuring somewhere in the region of 8 feet or maybe just a little over. The gold finish is chipped in a few areas so I'm not able to do the quick tidy up I was hoping for. I've decided to strip the old finish off. After that I'll have to do a tiny bit of filling to ensure the frame doesn't have all sharp edges where it shouldn't. After that a primer coat will have to be added. Once that has gone off I'll be able to work with the finishing coat(s). I'm not anticipating that to happen until maybe the end of August if I'm realistic.

You should see the job I've had getting hold of graphite. It's as rare as rocking horse manure! I need the stuff to coat the tops of the bridges. It acts as a mild lubricant where the strings stretch across it. I'm not sure what I'll do about that... Keep hunting I suppose. I know you can buy it in bulk but I don't think I'll be needing a kilo somehow. If push comes to shove I'll buy a pure graphite pencil from an art shop and shave it down to powder and apply that with a touch of alcohol (for the application, not me to stand there with a cravat and a martini looking at the thing!)

I also did a good bit of restoration on the bridges. (They're the long curved bits of wood on the above picture with black tops and notches cut out along the length of them) Bridges do have a tendency to get little cracks (or bigguns!) after many years with the amount of side pressure they have to deal with. Well, this one is perfectly fine on the whole. However, I'm not prepared to muck about presuming it's alright only to find later that it's not. So, out came "the idiot's guide to piano restoration" again and you can do a sort of injection of epoxy glue into the holes where the pins used to be (as I've removed them) and that seals all the potential gaps inside. I did that... 269 holes or thereabouts in total. It took bloody ages. Each hole took about a minute. If you do the sums and add a bit for dicking about it works out to be around five hours work... And to the naked eye there's not one shred of evidence that it has been carried out. However, I know that it has been done, so there.

This afternoon I'm going to give the soundboard a light sanding once more and apply the last (or last-but-one) coat of varnish. Hope you like it!

'Til next time,

bye for now!

Long-time-no-blog!

Hi all! (or should I say, hi both?)

It has been an absolute age since I last blogged about my piano. Why is that? Well, to be honest there hasn't been a lot going on with it at the moment. I've sort of come to an impasse.

As you know, the action has had a lovely overhaul by yours truly. The hammers are lovely and new and shiny the black keys are lovely and black and the white keys are lovely and nearly white and all the felt is enjoying being felt... I'm jealous of an inanimate object!

The reason for the huge pause in the work is that I'm now at the stage of rebuilding rather than dismantling. This is where the precision comes into its own. You've got to be accurate to within .2 of an atom or something so my usual mode of measuring (oh, that's near enough...ish) won't be sufficient.

My mate, Steve is making the pin block for me. That's a very, very difficult and precision job. I've told him that there's no room whatsoever for error and it has to be bang on (which is what no room for error means really!). He's very skilled indeed and to be honest, I'd not trust anyone other than him to do it. He's an exceptional craftsman. The pinblock will be made of several laminates of beech, all of which will be cross grained. That means, one laminate going in one direction, the next going in a different direction and the next another etc. That way it builds up a tremendous amount of strength which will create a lot of tuning stability. Once that has been made we'll be able to fit it to the frame and drill the holes for the tuning pins. Of course, the holes have to be drilled at a 7 degree angle to ensure that there's a bit of tension away from the strings rather than having them going straight down into the block and being pulled and bent by the huge forces of tension.

I've been looking at the casework on the piano and thinking about how to restore that. The wood is ok but not fantastic. This is where I get into the realms of "Are you bloody mad?" Well, actually, yes as it happens. I really think I might re-veneer the entire instrument. I know it'll be expensive, labour intensive, expensive, difficult to do, expensive and not to mention dear. However, if I'm doing it for myself I might as well do it exactly how I want it. I'm not anticipating doing it on another concert grand piano I may end up with in the future as I'm not planning on having another one... or am I? (Don't tell Martin!) I really fancy a flame mahogany butterfly pattern on the lid but I'd guess the veneer for the entire instrument will cost me £500 or so which is money I'd not included in the budget. However, as the expenditure is a drip-feed you don't really notice amounts going out as you're just spending £60 here, £80 there etc.

I've really got to learn the best way to finish the casework anyway. I really want it to be a bit of a showpiece if I can. The last thing I want is ill fitted veneer with a rubbish finish. I'd love a deep mahogany colour with a beautiful high-gloss. Mind you, the trouble with high-gloss pianos is that you spend most of your time cleaning them. They're magnets for dust. My other piano is a black high-gloss grand and you spend half of your time wiping it down with a damp cloth and then buffing it back up again. It's amazing how greasy they get if you're not careful too.

Best Day So Far.

By the title of this entry you can probably guess that I'm feeling very pleased with myself.

For a few weeks now I've been looking at the piano and trying to work out how to remove the pin block. For those who don't know, the pin block is the plank of laminated wood that stretches from the left to the right of the piano. It sits under the metal plate and its job is to take the tuning pins. The tuning pins are hammered into it then are turned slightly every time it is tuned. The pin block does deteriorate after time mainly due to age, temperature changes and of course the huge amount of pressure it is under from all of the tension from the strings. This pin block was shot so it had to come out. However, I didn't really know how to do it. I searched and searched the internet for advice and couldn't find anything. I looked in one of the four books I've got on piano restoration and they all said in that particular chapter "first, remove the pin block. After that you need to make another one" with no hint on how to remove it!!! So, I had all of the screws removed by Steve as I mentioned in an earlier post. After that I couldn't really make any headway. I tried to jemmy it out. It didn't budge. After weeks of procrastinating I eventually bit the bullet today. I went off to Homebase and bought a dead cheap set of chisels. Got them home, got the thickest and heaviest one out of the packet and started thwacking against the glue joints. Almost immediately it started to look promising. After a few seconds of belting it (that's the professional term) I heard a huge crack. Don't worry, it was what I wanted to hear. I looked down and the glue joint has come away! HURRAY! The front rail was moving forward and cracked the veneer but I expected that and was planning on replacing the veneer anyway. Cutting a long story short I got it out! It was a big big job but well worth taking the time to ensure it was done correctly.

I've also completed another task that took a LOT longer that I'd ever think was imagineable. The soundboard needed to have the varnish removed. I'd say it took me best part of 20 hours to do it! It's such a slow process. However, the soundboard looks fantastic now. Have a look at the picture to see for yourself.

Once all the finish was removed from the soundboard I then started to remove the bridge pins. I totted up that there's 480 of them on this piano. Each one of them is very tightly wedged into the bridge so that the string can go between them and thus increase pressure. Trying to remove them is a job in itself as they're at an offset angle. They don't just go straight in you know. One one side they point a little towards you and on the other side they point a little away from you. Trying to get a decent purchase while pulling on them is very hard and you're more than aware that you could damage the bridge or the soundboard. I'll be replacing all of the pins with new ones after I've given the top of the bridge a little tittivation to smarten it up.

Some terrible news coming up... Well, it's not actually, I think it's pretty funny.

Since we put our house on the market in June last year, my other grand piano has been in storage courtesy of my friends at Omega Music which is on the trading estate just around the corner from us. Of course, we all thought that the house would be on the market for 10 minutes and the piano could go to wherever we moved to. As soon as the for sale board went up the property market collapsed. So, as a consequence, my other piano has languished courtesy of the local piano dealer, in a storage depot for 10 months. Well, they rang me the other day. "Hi Stuart, we're giving up the storage facility. Where shall we bring your piano back to?" The phrase "BUGGER!" came to my lips. So, after a lot of argy-bargy I've made room in the garage for the other piano to come back on Wednesday. You'd think our garage is a tardis wouldn't you? I'll have 15ft worth of grand pianos in there! I'll leave the current piano on its legs and the other one will stay on its side as I'll not be working on that one anyway. You may ask why we took it out of the house to start with? Well, our living room is only 12' square and a 6' grand piano in it did rather dominate so we thought it'd be wiser to remove it to make the place seem a little roomier. I've got to say that it's lovely without the piano in here as space is something we're not really used to. Martin did have a habit of saying "Give me a tune" for a few weeks after the piano had been taken away as he knew how much I was missing it. Of course, he got a slap.

At this point I'd like to report some bullying. It's not something I'd like to put into the public domain but what the hell. I've got a friend called Ellen S. She's a retired teacher from Norway and she's been picking on me. Tell 'er, mam! Actually I'm thrilled that someone other than me looks at this thing. You do wonder sometimes don't you?

Hammer Time!

I'm trying hard not to whitter on too much for too long on this posting... Oh, who am I kidding?

So, this edition is about the long-awaited hammers and shanks that came from America. I initially wasn't going to replace the old ones but after lots of deliberating about the restoration process I thought it'd not be a proper job if I didn't replace them. I had a bit of a shock when investigating prices of them. It's very difficult to get them for less than around £850 in the UK however, the ones I got were half that in US dollars!!! The hammers took just under a fortnight to arrive which, considering the fact they took 5 days to get from customs in UK to our front door wasn't bad going. Why they took so long at this end is anyone's guess! Anyway, that aside there was £72 in import tax and the like which I was expecting.

I opened the parcel at work as I had to collect them from the depot. I was due to be teaching a class of students music from Brigadoon and My Fair Lady that morning so got there a little earlier to play with the new toys. The students were very taken with my new purchase. Well, either that or they were just humouring their slightly strange lecturer. It was almost certainly the latter.

I read the instructions. Although the hammers were pre-bored of course they needed to be prepared to fit the shank snugly. I needed to buy a small reamer that would fit inside the hole to enlarge them to the correct size. I didn't have one of those so bought a few. They were dead cheap so I didn't worry about that.

After a lit of trial and error in getting the technique sorted out to successfully, accurately and quickly ream the hammers I was moving on apace. It took probably two days or so to do the job but it was worth it. The job comprised of reaming the hammers, checking for fitting of shanks. Lining up the placing of the hammer head on the shank by screwing to the hammer rail, having two old hammers placed on there at either end of the bridge sections and visualising a line from one end to the other to ensure the hammers were at the right point. This wasn't so easy as it may sound as glueing, lining up and everything else just takes lots of time as well as bucketloads of patience. Once all the glue had set there was a little bit of shank sticking out of the top of the hammer. This needed to be sawn off as it would otherwise catch on the backcheck. Out came the little trusty hacksaw to aid me. Sawing these was a gratifying task that was helped/hindered by Loopy - the neighbour's cat who's really called Lucy who seemed to I couldn't possibly manage without her arse in my face. Obviously, she felt the need to oblige!

I'm now at the stage where all of the hammers are fitted to the action and am roughly regulating them so that they're all level and the same distance apart. I know it's far too early to be doing this as the piano hasn't even got a frame in it. However, as the action is going to be knocking about in the house for however long a piece of string is I wanted it to look uniform. It'd do my head in if every time I looked at it all the hammers were out of alignment. Plus, I'm gaining valuable experience in piano regulation/repair technique by doing it too.

I've not been out to the garage to do much more work on the piano itself lately. I've been very busy at work and just glad to get home after the end of a day. I've been assessing lots of shows this last couple of weeks and have played piano in a few of them. Needless to say, that means that during lots of my evenings I have been otherwise engaged. I'm planning on going out at the weekend to do a bit.

Despite the above paragraph, I've still got on a little further on the main body of the piano. I've stripped the finish off most of the soundboard since last time I stuck a piccy up. As the soundboard is spruce and has been varnished since 1914, stripping that off has revealed a beautiful and pale new-looking soundboard. I plan on coating it with a clear varnish and then a few coats of laquer (although (I'll have to research that's the correct procedure first). I think it'll look like brand new. Some good news though is that after a very close scrutiny, it seems that what I thought were very slight cracks are actually just glue-joints from when the soundboard was first assembled. They're tight and solid so, at the moment of speaking at least, the soundboard is in amazingly good condition and will not need any restoration on it apart from making it look nicer with the new varnish. That's only a good thing as far as I'm concerned.

I'll stick one or two pictures on later today. Until then, tra-aa!

Big jobs!

Well, dear reader it has been a week or two since last time I put something on here and I thought I'd best help you catch up on what's been happening.

You think that as I've not written anything that I've not been doing anything? Well, you'll be wrong on that front. I think the last thing I was telling you about was removing the strings which was a big job. I got that finished and was coming to the hardest part... Removal of the frame. Not an easy task.

I had a chat with my mate Steve who's great. He's a carpenter/plumber/builder/sailor/golfer/singer and boozer all to a greater or lesser degree (but I'm not prepared to way which he's good or bad at.) Steve had his handyman head on when we chatted. I needed advice on how to safely remove the frame. The frame itself is well over 8 feet long as it goes from end to end just about. As it is made from cast iron and takes in excess of 30,000lbs of pressure it does have to be a bit heavy... If only we really acknowledged HOW heavy!

I rang Steve and told him that I was ready to remove the frame and after lots of head scratching, teeth sucking and generally standing about looking at it for a while, the three of us, Steve, Martin and I came up with a very, VERY Heath Robinson plan. I was up for hiring a winch but I was assured that three of us could manhandle the frame (which weighs in at around half a ton I'd guess). I wasn't so sure. So, Steve got his big butch brace to remove the bolts and the like from the frame. How did we lift it high enough to get enough leverage to lift it? "Ah-ha!" Said Steve, "We'll get a jack out of the car." Actually, it was a pretty good idea. He stood the jack on the keybed (with the wood protected of course) and started cranking. The frame lifted everso slightly. He carried on. I braced the underside of the keybed as I didn't want it to collapse on itself. After a lot of very slow and careful jacking, the frame was clear of the front of the piano... But still seated at the other end. How to get it out of the piano now?

We braced the front with a very thick broom shank. It was laid across from the left to the right of the piano under the frame. That way when the time was right we would be able to use it as a roller. We then tried to lift the other end... It was jammed so after a little wiggling (the frame, not us) it lifted freely. We thrust another broom handle under that end. Before we did this we moved the piano out of the garage to ensure we had more room. The comments from passing neighbours were hysterical... Not many concert grand pianos standing on drives around here. At this point we were ready to start moving the frame. Steve and Martin at the keyboard end, me at the back. Gently, gently. It started rolling forward. The plan was working (after a fashion). The broom handles were really bowing very heavily indeed but they held. When the frame was far enough forward we were able to counterbalance it. Then, VERY SLOWLY, lowered it to the floor where Steve and Martin took the strain until it landed on the concrete in total control. At this point we thought it'd be a good idea to take a photo. That way if we dropped it and it smashed we'd know what it used to look like! You can see how big the frame is with this picture. Both Steve and I are 6ft tall!

We then tried to get it back in the garage by walking it along the boards we had. We then lowered it under the garage door and put it up against the wall ready for my attention when I get to it.

Why did I need the frame out? I wanted to strip the soundboard and check it for cracks. You can't do a proper job of that without removing the frame. When we'd removed the frame I was able to see that my decision to remove the old pinblock was the right one as it was quite badly split in a couple of places that meant it would have NEVER held a tuning no matter how much work I'd have done on the rest of it.

Refinishing the soundboard is a relatively easy process. It just takes forever to do. I've got to scrape the old varnish off the soundboard. I've got a carpenter's scraper which I'm using rather than trying varnish remover as that seems to be the proper way of doing it. It takes forever. I spent the whole afternoon out there the other day and only did a square foot. It'll definitely be worthwhile though as you can see the colour of the wood underneath and once the one or two small cracks in the soundboard have been shimmed it'll look smashing. I'm thinking of having a clear varnish to retain the very pale colour of the wood as I think it'll be lovely.

Stringing along with you!

Sometimes it's possible to set yourself too much of a target for one day's work. Today was one of those days.

I popped across to Omega Music to borrow my mate Jerry's piano tuning gear that he'd got his wife Jo, to take to work (she works there) at about lunchtime and had a good natter to her. The first natter I've had in best part of a fortnight seeing as I've had a fantastically bad chest infection for about three weeks. At last I'm able to talk to someone without coughing all over them and then showing the colour of the inside of my lungs. Anyway, you didn't open this blog to read about that did you?!?

The idea was that I'd lower the string tension on the piano (that's what you're supposed to do) and eventually start to remove the strings. Getting the tension down was relatively easy - take your time and do the treble strings (unison first, then left then right) but you've got to do it evenly throughout the piano keyboard, gradually lowering the stresses on the frame. As Martin said "What happens if you do it wrong; does the piano fold in half?" Enough of his helpful comments methinks! Lol! But do you know what took an absolute age? Removing the tuning pins and getting rid of the treble wire. Of course, I want the bass strings to be remade so will be sending those off to be copied so they were all carefully(ish) removed, threaded onto wire via the eye loop at the bottom end and they'll be packed into a nice big box to the string maker who'll do a good quality replacement for them. It really does take ages. I counted somewhere in the region of 243 individual pins (give or take one or two) all of which I unscrewed by hand courtesy of Jerry's tuning levers. It took pretty much a full day's work. I started at about 1pm and came in again at 8pm. Yeah, you know me by now, I do tend to faff a bit and get a little sidetracked by things like the neighbour's cat, Lucy, coming and saying hello. She spent about half an hour sitting on my shoulder while I was working. I always wanted a parrot but I'd had an African Grey in mind not a tortoiseshell! Then before all of the unwinding I needed a micrometer to measure the gauge of the strings I was removing so that I ordered the correct gauge pinao wire to re-string. I collared another neighbour, Jim, and asked if I could borrow his. It just happened to be out on the kitchen worktop when I asked so did my calculations and gave him it back within about 30 minutes.

The day wore on and the arms, shoulders and back were killing me with the constant unwinding motion. I wanted to stop but knew if I did that I'd still have it to do later so ploughed on. Eventually it was finished. What else to do but tidy up! The picture to the left is the piano with all of the strings removed and the side with the finish removed which I did last night. Funnily enough, the sanding part took very little time indeed but I've got to admit that despite it being done by hand I didn't do a very good job as yet as I've got two more sandings to do on that side alone. The grade should get finer after each sanding but at least you get the idea of how it is starting to look.