Post #18 - When In Doubt, Not Left Or Right - Go Forward

Sometimes you just have to laugh at yourself.  All throughout this experience, I've been doing it - and I hope that if anyone is really reading this, you're laughing along with me, preferably not at me.

It seems I can get so fixated on an idea that I lose sight of the alternatives.  While asking for opinions from anyone I can thing of - knowledgeable or not - and hoping they won't talk me out of it while secretly praying that they do, I didn't let myself realize that this is not just right (re-peg and re-string and totally re-store) or left (gut and drop, then restore the exterior only). 

There is a forward way that may lead to one direction or the other, but let's me develop some skills and test to see which is the better way...

I concede that everything I've read and been told says that an antique English wooden harp cannot and will not hold proper pitch.  And that this piano is way out of tune, which bears that point out and is not a good thing.

But I don't know that.  It hasn't been tested.

And I do know that, mechanically and physically, this piano is in better shape than any piece of furniture 100+ and possibly 150+ years old has a right to be.  Neglected for maybe 10-50 years, who knows?, but it is in no way, shape, or form a wreck.

And I also know that someone, not me, has done work on this piano in the not-so-distant past.  At least two hammer dowels have been replaced and at least one string.  And, as my disappointing treasure hunt proved, it has been cleaned and reconditioned internally.


So...  Here's what we're going to do.

I'm going to get a piano tuner kit.  Not terribly expensive and, if it comes down to re-pegging and re-stringing, then I need on anyway.  If it turns out that gutting is the only option, well, maybe I can start a sideline as a tuner or - worst case - resell it on eBay or someplace and chalk the loss up to experience.
I do not expect to be able to get it into proper pitch immediately, if ever, especially if I don't re-peg.  So, I'm going to shoot for bringing it up a half-step or step from where it is and getting in tune with itself.  That, in itself, should be an interesting task.
Then...  We'll see.  Does it stay?  Is it even possible?  Does the harp explode like dry kindling?  Who knows. 
But...  If it stays, then I just avoided several hundred dollars in hardware and string costs.  I don;t really expect this, but it's worth a shot.
And if it doesn't, well, I'll be able to prove to myself whether I'm capable of doing a tuning or not.  If so, then maybe a re-peg and re-string is possible.  If not, as much as I hate to say it, then it's gutting time.
In the meantime, while I'm waiting for the tuning kit, I'll work on the piano case and the keys.  While I got the legs back in shape and the keys look way better than they did, there's still a bunch of work to do on the case and finishing touches on the keys.  Unless I get really bored, the panels will wait for their refinishing until I'm ready to put the whole thing back together - one way or another.
Since a blog post without pictures is boring, here are some pics on the work on the case that I started today.  So far, it's my trusty pal Liquid Gold just to clean everything up.  We'll get to the real refinishing products in the next couple of days.  But if you look at the before and after pictures (left and right or top and bottom, respectively), hopefully you'll see an improvement.

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The next post or two will be about the cleaning and restoration of the case and keys.  Then we'll see about the tuning!

Post #17 - The Stool

Every piano needs a seat - bench or stool.  When we bought this piano, it came with neither - so of course, within a day of getting the piano home, we were out at the local antique stores looking for a stool.

Not a bench - too plain.  A stool.  Think "Pretty Baby" (the movie) bordello scenes....

Now, you can't see what The Professor is sitting on in this picture, but you have to know it's not a plain bench.  It's a stool.  It has to be...  And so that's what we had to have.  Actually, we might need that lamp as well.

We found it, rather more easily than I expected.  It wasn't in great condition - the glass balls in the claw feet were cracked and busted - but it worked and it was stable and it was old.  And it didn't break the bank.

You've seen this stool in various pictures of the piano, but to refresh your memory - this is it.

Unfortunately, this is the best picture I have of the stool in its original (assembled) state.  To be honest, I wasn't really thinking of including it in the blog until it turned into a secondary project.

The first thing that had to be fixed were the balls in the claw feet.  All four crystal/glass/whatever balls were cracked, broken, and ragged - no way they could be put unprotected on the wood floor.

So the search began for 1 1/4" glass balls to replace the broken ones.  In the event that you ever need to find glass or crystal balls of this size, here's some advice - give up now, unless you know something I don't know.  Web searches, hobby store searches, hardware store searches, absolutely nothing (unless you're willing to pay for custom, and we weren't).  And, even if you do find the correct size, I've been told by professionals - and I heartily believe it at this point - getting the balls into the claws in almost an absolute impossibility.

But before you can get anything into the claws, you have to get the existing ball fragment out of the claws.  That took a hammer and a lot of shattering glass/crystal/whatever.  And that should have been instructional to me to begin with...  But, no, I was convinced that I could bend the claws, get the new balls in - when I found them - and then bend the claws back.  We wanted original hardware wherever possible.

I got the fragments out, but then hit the wall - no replacements.  And professional advice that even if I could find replacements, there was no way to get them back in without ruining them.

A trip to Michael's gave us a temporary solution...  Wooden 1 1/4" balls.  Not exactly as elegant as crystal/glass - but it worked.  And, because they were wood, I could get them into the claws without shattering or scratching them (badly).

Of course, I immediately got commentary about putting plain, unpainted, un-anythinged wooden balls into the claws.  But, I figured, if this turns out to be the final solution, a) I can take them out, finish them, and put them back or b) I have spares and I know where I can get more.

So the wooden balls stayed for a period of several months, until I started working on the piano legs.  Once the legs were finished - and I'm loathe to start working on the piano case until I get the interior workings figured out - the stool kind of stood out like a sore thumb.

We knew we wanted that bordello, extravagant look for the stool, so a trip to Hobby Lobby scored some fringe and baubles (and furniture tacks).  Then it was simply getting the stool in shape for it's bordello-fication.

And that's when this turned from a quick, easy upgrade to a week worth of hard labor.  Not what I expected.

The stool seat, pretty much the only part we really paid attention to, was clean and in good shape.  The screw rod that held it to base worked, was solid, and seemed stable.

The unpleasant surprise was when I looked at the base.  Quite obviously, the lower part of this stool had seen some hard times, and that didn't include the glass/crystal/whatever busted balls in the claws.  On close inspection, the base of this thing looked like it had been immersed in some kind of oily substance and the left to dry and molder for 20 or 30 years.  I kid you not.

This was a little more than nasty.  To this day, I wonder it the upper stool seat really belongs to the stool base.  Or if the oily water this had to soak in for several months only got two feet high.

Out came my new best friend, Liquid Gold, that had cleaned a whole bunch of wood products in our house over the past couple of weeks.  Surely, this would cut through the crud on this thing.

Not a chance.  It made a slight difference, but not anything I'd be willing to touch with my bare hands (I was wearing gloves when I started this particular project, but there were no gloves involved in getting the thing home).

Next came Murphy's Oil Soap.  That made a little more difference, but there was still an (un)healthy layer of crud on the base.

I decided to be a little unconventional at this point and tried Howard's Restor-A-Finish.  I originally bought this to use on the bad spots on the piano case, but if it would take this gunk off with no stripper, it was worth a shot.

Another semi-wasted effort...  It certainly made the crud shiny, but it didn't take much of it off.

So, back to the hardware store - actually Home Depot this time, I like to be an equal opportunity shopper - and a can of finish stripper. This was my choice of last resort, but it was the last choice I had.

After two hours of hard labor with the stripper and steel wool, I got most of the gunk off.  Not all, but without totally disassembling the whole structure and soaking the components in stripper solution, I was satisfied.

Now for the bordello-fication.  First the seat fringe...  This was harder than I thought it would be - and who would have ever thought that a piano stool seat is almost 4 feet in circumference.  Victoria would not believe me and measured it herself.  But we needed about 45" of fringe and 46 upholstery tacks (not including the ones I bent) to completely go around the stool.

Next came the baubles, around the de-crudified stool base top.  This only took 3 feet of baubles, but it wasn't all that much easier to get it in place and even all the way around.  Out of the 96 upholstery tack we bought, I should have used about 70 all total.  I was left with about 6 when I was done.

The finishing touch was the claw feet.  The NEW claw feet.  I finally gave into conventional wisdom and realized that I would not find 1 1/4" glass balls and that, even if I did, I would never get them into the old claw feet without breaking them or damaging them beyond repair.  Add the fact that the original hardware is cast iron, not bronze, and all the piano bangles, including the front casters - which look great - are bronze, not cast iron.  Not a good match.

Back to the web...  First stop, Google.  Second stop, eBay via Google.  Do you know how much they want for vintage claw feet?  Most of them are cast iron and most come in sets of three...  And all of them were way more than I wanted to pay, especially in bronze.

Back to Google.  Next stop, Etsy.  And, bingo!  A picture of three bronze claw feet for sale and - bonus - $15!  There's a deal that's too good to be true.  Several clicks later, the order was placed and within 30 minutes, notification that they had shipped and it would be a couple of days before they arrived.

I think it was either the day before I expected them to arrive - or possibly the actual day - that my subconscious mind informed my conscious mind that there were actually four legs to this stool.  Four legs = four feet.  And I ordered three...  My good mood and sense of getting a good deal just vanished.

Still...  I can always find another bronze claw and, if they didn't completely match, well, no one would look that hard and notice.  If I could get it past Victoria, it would get past anyone.

Then the package arrived.  Ripped open to reveal - ONE claw.  One claw???  I ordered three.  Invoice said 1 claw, $15.  Back to the Etsy site - three available, order separately, $15 apiece.  I need to read things more carefully and not be harpooned by a price that's too good to be true.  I do this all the time.

Back to Google, and screw the vintage stuff.  I want bronze, I want four, and I want as cheap as I can find.  Third try was the charm - Kennedy Hardware.  Four brand-spanking new bronze claw feet (with two screws even, in case you need a longer one) and unbroken glass feet.  $10 a pop.  Done.

Last step was assembly of the feet and the rest of the stool.  Of course, the feet didn't fit onto the leg stumps, so the stumps needed to be ground down - by hand - so that they were properly tapered to fit the feet.  Then drill some new holes, select the appropriate screw out of the two provided, and we have legs with feet.

Two wobbly legs needed to be corrected as well before the seat went back on.  A little drilling and a couple of screws through the base into the legs and no more wobble.

Finally, reattach the stool seat and step back to get the full effect...

Post #16 - Give Me Back My Legs

Well, once I was finished polishing the brass, the next thing to do - I guess - was to put as much of it as possible back in place.  You saw the piano on its back in the last post, now it's time to put the legs back.

The first thing to tackle were the back casters - these were not bronze, like the front ones, but plain cast iron heavy-duty casters.  And they were doing a heck of a job on our floor, they had to go.

So, off to Lowes to find the closest match in size and shape to the ones I had pulled off.  Found them, but the holes weren't a match - no big deal I have a drill.

I put them on in the same places the old ones came off and they seemed stable.  However, I wasn't really happy with this new configuration - experience with the front legs and casters told me that I wanted as much of the weight of the piano off of them as possible, especially since the wheels are still bronze and not exactly smooth to the touch.

So, the next day I was back at Lowes buying to more caster for the body.  I knew that anything ugly was not going to pass muster with my wife, but I thought that I might be able to strategically place these in the front the piano case and they would still be reasonably out of sight.

That takes care of the easy part.  Now the legs themselves...

Like everything else on this piano, the legs were in pieces and not held together by any hardware (other than the casters at the bottom).  They're essentially a big wooden peg at top and bottom, with the shank of the leg in the middle; the top of peg is a large screw that holds all the lathed components and screws into the bottom of the key bed.

First thing on my mind after taking them all apart was how to keep them from falling out of the key bed any time the piano was shifted.  Both of the wooden screws were fairly well stripped at the tip and even if they had been in better condition, the holes that they screwed into were a disaster.

Enter the two-headed screw.  A quick drilling to the top of the peg and I seated a two-headed screw into the top of each peg.  After carefully threading the leg back into the hole, I created an indentation as a guide for drilling the matching hole into the key bed base.  This had to be carefully done, or I would have drilled through the key cheeks on either side of the key board.

With that, hopefully, resolved and out of the way, the next thing on my mind was the condition of the leg and it's components.  Dirty and dull.

This is where Liquid Gold Wood Cleaner came to the rescue.  This stuff worked great (I had never used it before but after I saw how it cleaned up the legs, I was going around the house using it on a bunch of our antique furniture pieces).

Once cleaned, I used a rub-on polyurethane to bring a shine back to the wood.

And then, finally, the last step was to put the legs back together and put them back into the piano.  I was still a little worried about the double-headed screw trick, but it worked great on the left side and fairly well on the right.  The difference was that the top of each leg has a square block of finished wood.  On the left, the threads had been totally stripped and someone before me had screwed it directly to the key bed.  On the right, the threads were still pretty good and the block came off with the leg.  Screwing the left side in was easy because that block was fixed and I could go as tight as I could.  On the right, you had to match the front of the block correctly so it faced the right way - and that made it harder to get it in as tightly as the left.

But in the end, it all worked out and both legs were back in place.  Then came the heavy lifting - literally.  I got the piano back upright and all wheels were holding nicely.

Here's the before picture - all I really have is a close-up of the caster, but you'll get the idea.

And here are the after pictures.  If you look hard you can see the difference between the leg and the paino case wood (disregard the filler - haven't gotten to THAT yet).

Post #15 - Will No One Bail Me Out?

So...  While waiting for someone qualified to weigh in this whole adventure, I decided that cosmetic work would not be a bad idea.  After all, real keyboard or electronic keyboard, it still has to LOOK good on the outside, right?

I started with the brass and metal.  Not all that much of it, but enough to make it interesting.  First, we have the candle holders that sit over the keyboard to provide light whilst you are playing.

This is what they looked like when we bought the piano and brought it home.  Quaint, but tarnished.

 After I removed them - four screws per holder, if you recall the earlier post - they weren't all that much prettier.  In fact, the wax caked on the inside kind of made them worse.

I didn't do these in tandem - the candle holders were removed and initially "cleaned" a month or so prior to this post.  But they kind of sat around, waiting for the next phase to begin.  Let us commence with the "next phase".

The other metal pieces are the casters.  Now, these are a particular source of irritation to me.  When we were bringing the piano into the house for the first time, my neighbor - Mr.Ray, mentioned in one of the original posts - was horrified that I would actually risk my laminate floor with these metal wheels.  No - we had to carry the damn thing from the front door to its resting place to save the floor.  Later on, I found out just how right Mr. Ray was - and why those wheels had to go.

These are the front wheels on the legs that hold the key bed up.   They are not the heavy duty, muscle-toting wheels that sit under the body of the piano itself.  But they'll do a number on your floor just the same.

The cast iron, muscle-toting casters are the ones to be worried about, as I found out when I tried to move this bad boy to clean the floors - moving out, no problem; moving back, major gouges...

Down the piano goes onto its back - no mean feat by yourself, but not nearly so nasty as when it the piano sports a lovely cast iron harp and weighs three times more.  The good news is that this time I did it without trapping my toes underneath and leaving me stranded for hours until someone could rescue me.

Once all the hardware was off, it was Brasso time.  All the pieces got a nice soaking in a Brasso and water solution (separate times, but for the sake of the blog, who cares?)

The original soaking left the pieces clean, but in no way looking like brass - as the bottom candle holder shows.  It took a cleaning with a very fine steel wool to shine it up - as the upper holder indicates.

Same was true with the casters.  You can see the polished brass at the top and the Brasso-ed, but not polished, ones below.

Brasso-ed.

Polished.

The amazing thing - to me - were the casters. I replaced the heavy-duty, muscle-toting casters under the piano body with state-of-the-art Lowes steel and rubber 175 pound load bearing casters.  No one will see them.   Rather than just the two in the rear that were originally there, there are now four - two in the rear of the case and two in the front - for balance.  If I guess correctly, and I hope I do, then these will take the weight off the legs.

The original idea was to try to keep the upper casters and replace the wheels with rubber ones, to save the floor.  I even bought new casters with the hopes of being able to figure out out to remove the wheels of each set and than swap them.

Then I actually removed the old ones from the Brasso bath and polished them with the steel cloth.

Ok, no rubber wheels going on here.  This is where I added the second set of modern, industrial, muscle-toting wheels to the frame so that these would be more ornamental than functional.  But - damn - did they clean up fine!

Both the candle holders and the front casters are things of art.  Let us sink even further into the netherlands of No Return.,,