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.,,