Post #25 - Cracks Of Doom?

When we last left of, I was just beginning to get the piano in tune with itself - in tune being middle C actually equal to the G below it.  And, for the most part, the piano was staying in tune for longer and longer periods of time (i.e. days instead of hours, and then a couple of days instead of just one).

However, and this where the title of this post comes in, I was in the middle of fine-tuning (no pun intended) the upper octaves when I happened to glance slightly upwards from the tuning pegs to the top of the piano...  And saw a crack that I didn't think I had seen before.

Now, what you're looking at here is actually a piece of veneer that overlays the top of the wooden harp and frame.  There are several of them, about five inches long and go from the front of the harp to the back of the piano - I assume they provide decorative cover for the construction underneath.

This is the same veneer that I mentioned in the first couple of posts - where the various tuners from the turn of the century signed their work.  And, I knew that at least one piece had sustained some damage, that I took a picture of back when all this started...

This horizontal crack (which is the one of which I'm speaking) looks more like somebody dropped something heavy on top of the piano - the lid would have had to of been up, of course.  The vertical crack is not really a crack, though.  That is the seam between two of the veneer pieces; if you look carefully, you can see that it runs all the way to the back (although the gap is slightly bigger in the front).  There are similar seams between each of the veneer pieces.

The unfortunate part of this is that I did not take photographs of the entire veneer top - I got the interesting parts, the signatures and the horizontal crack.  So I can't be sure that these "new" vertical cracks weren't there originally.

But I don't think they were - these are real cracks and I was  specifically looking for damage when I was doing the initial pictures.  I'm fairly positive that these are new.

And there's more than one.  As you can see from that first picture, that particular crack appears almost directly above one the bolts that assume hold the hard to the frame.  Here are the others, from left to right as you go across the top of the keyboard:

 

 

 

That first crack is actually near the signatures, further proof that it's new.  As you can see, these other cracks (the last two) are also close to bolts as well.  Does that mean anything?  I have no idea, but I think it may.

 

The encouraging thing is that I don't see cracks in the pin board or the harp - just the veneer splitting.  I suppose I could - and probably should - pry up the veneer to see what is really going underneath.

 

But, after spending two weeks tightening and tuning, they seem to be stabilizing.  Well, they are not getting bigger.  And the piano is staying in tune better and better, as I said.  And, finally, I don't want to damage any part of this thing without a real need to - and I'm fairly sure that once those veneer pieces come up, they aren't going back easily or probably at all.  I've worked with veneer before.

 

So, for now, I'm going to leave well enough alone, cross my fingers, and trust to my luck - which has been holding so far.  I still have another week or two of fine-tuning to see how well this first tuning holds, so I'll monitor the cracks and see what happens.  Hopefully nothing.