A) Yes, I really am both a computer professional and someone who makes his living off of the internet,
B) My personal pet peeve (and the same as most of the people with whom I work) is someone asking me, "How do I..." before they have Googled it, and
C) Despite both those things, there are times when I suffer from extreme tunnel vision and a total lack of following my own advice
You'll see what I mean as this particular post plays itself out.
First, we'll start with a reminder of what the various felts and pads looked like before I pulled them all off:
Now, obviously, if you are not going to do the exterior work first, this is the place to start - you can't do anything with the keys unless you get these pads fixed first.
And this is where I somehow departed from the logical, sane world in which I live. I heard felts and immediately thought of Crafts stores - Hobby Lobby, Michaels, fabric stores, you name it.
So that's where I went. Bought felt squares in a variety of (appropriate, yet different) colors, and proceeded to cut them into the correct dimensions. While I was on the long strips, it seemed to work fine.
Now, what you see above is (in the upper picture) a strip of adhesive black felt that replaced the disintegrating (horsehair?) pad at the top of shot. The red strip in the middle replaces all the little paper and felt circlets that are used to balance the keys.
In the bottom picture, you can see that the first piece red balancing felt has been fitted to the pegs and that there is now a tan piece of felt that has been fitted to base part of the key bed.
In order to do that, I measured either the width of the existing felt or horsehair/whatever (if there was one) and cut the felt to that measurement. Then I simply fit the segments in place.
For the parts with pegs, I cut the felt to the appropriate width, laid it on top of the pegs, and then put a piece of cardboard over it. By pressing, hard, on the cardboard, I created indentations in the felt, which I then punched through using an awl.
A little tedious, but it actually worked.
Then we got to the little felt green circles that are used to regulate the height of the keys - and that's where the trouble started.
I had bought lovely green squares of felt - and then realized that I'd have to cut 264 (88 keys x a potential of 3 felts per key) circles. Not only did that sound like way too much work, but I have no illusions about my ability to cut a perfect circle 288 times. Once maybe, 288 times never.
And, what I really wanted was this to look as professional as possible - no lop-sides circles, no ovals, no squares (probably the easiest solution). So I started to look for ways to cut circles, 3/4" in diameter, from felt.
I thought I found them when I discovered these cool tools in the hobby shops that teachers and crafters use to punch out shapes. After two purchases of the devices, I finally gave into the label warnings that said they were good for paper, but not much else. You cannot punch through felt with these, take it from one who has tried - and failed.
So then I headed to the web - surely someone must sell green felt circlets. Did I look for piano supplies, the way a normal person would do? No, I was fixated - tunnel vision - on the whole craft avenue.
The thought that there were web sites that actually sold piano repair parts - of any kind - never even crossed my mind at this point.
Then I went to Etsy, beloved crafting site of my wife, I went everywhere I could Google, trying to find forest green circlets in bulk. Did I find them? No. You can buy crafty multi-color packs for creating flowers and whatnot, but no one sold a single, solid color in bulk in the size I needed.
Rather than holding out for the 3/4" size I measured the existing pads at, I found some at 7/8". Now, how bad could that be - we're talking fractions of an inch here. So I bought 288.
And they were too big.
They overlapped, which meant they would not work as they were or I would have to cut them which would mean they weren't circles anymore. Back to Etsy. I must have missed something somewhere.
I found a vendor who sold bags of various colored felts in the size I needed them - a couple of emails later and she agreed to sell me 288 green ones only - after I described what I was trying to do. Several days later, they arrived in the mail.
Of course, the only issue left was that they had no center-punched hole. Out came the trusty awl and 288 punches later, I had 288 3/4" green circlet felts with a hole punched more or less in the middle.
Now I had replaced the pads and felts, and had sufficient supply to (hopefully) balance the keys as needed, once they were ready to go back on - and it only took 3 or 4 weeks to figure it all out.
It was about this time that I started thinking about the keys that would go on top of these lovely, handmade pads, and trying to get one step ahead, how I was going to tune this bad boy - and try to ensure that it stayed that way - once I got the keys back in place.
And THAT'S when I started my real web investigation into real piano stuff. It's really lucky that we don't have a gun in the house...
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