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repairing an old piano

A friend of mine owns an old german piano made in the 1850s. It is absolutely beautiful wood. Something was wrong with the damper peddle and he found a tuner that would work on it but the tuner said he needed a metal worker to repair the damaged part. That is where I come into the picture.

The piano tuner pulled out a long metal rod (almost 4 feet long) and about 1/2 inch diameter. Three small rods about 0.2 inchs in diameter are attached to the long rod, but one is broken off. This rod apparently holds the dampers off the strings when the peddle is pushed.

It was very interesting to study the German construction used in the 1850s.

The metal looks (and machines) exactly like a piece of CRS rod. I don't know a much about history but was this kind of metal common back then?

The long rod was cross drilled and counter sunk on each side for the small rods. The small rods are reduced in size and pressed into the long rod and peened over to rivit them in. The mushroomed top was filed off even with the rod and it was not obvious how they were attached. It was done so well that I could not determine how they were attached until I tried to drill out the small rod.

The end of each small rod was flattend and drilled to make a small hinge. The other part of the hinge was a piece of flat stock with a slot (probably sawed) and pinned to the small round bar.

My point is that the workman ship was excellent and probably completely done with hand tools. I am impressed and I bow down to the OLD craftsmans.

I repaired the broken rod by making an extension that went over the small rod and reduced in diameter to go through the existing hole in the big rod. I peened it over and filed it off just like the original. I used loctite and a small pin to secure the small rod to the extension.

chuck

Reply to
Chuck Sherwood
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No to my knowledge. I would expect it would be wrought iron. Steel was first made in the 1880's, with Bessemer converters, at least here in the US.

Harold

Reply to
Harold and Susan Vordos

About 35 years ago I dove with a vengance into collecting and restoring antique automatic musical instruments. That included music boxes, paper roll organs, player pianos and nickelodeons. I think I had as many as six player pianos residing in various corners of our home at the same time.

There were some really ingenious mechanical mechanisms in some of those beasts, a lot of which were constructed mainly out of wood, leather, rubberized cloth and glue. There was a some metal content in the hobby, especially when salvaging beat up music box mechanisms, but much of the time my drill press and lathe were pressed into making replacement player piano parts out of various hardwoods.

My favorite gadgets were the D/A converters in high end player pianos which used digitally encoded intensity tracks on the paper rolls to control the vacuum level which sucking a little bellows closed to propel the piano hammer against its strings with the original recording artist's "touch". Those were used to recreate the "expression" in the music, leading to Manufacturers' slogans like, "The master's fingers on your piano."

I can't remember now just which successor hobby nudged that one out of the way, but I still have one pretty nice player piano and about 500 paper rolls specific to it taking up some space in our playroom. Every once in a while I fire it up for a guest so I can show off something interesting like a Rachmaninov concerto recorded for that piano by the composer himself in 1919.

Jeff

Reply to
Jeff Wisnia

All I can say is "Good for you, Chuck". I'm always glad to see/hear of someone repairing something old and returning it to "like new" condition. I'm proud of ya..... Ken.

Reply to
Ken Sterling

Very cool. I always feel honored when someone wants me to work on something old and good.

John

Reply to
JohnM

The one I made I let the tumbler (barrel) ride on two rollers that came off a conveyer system. I ran the belt around one of the rollers so it acts as a pulley. Had a couple more pulleys and a jackshaft to reduce the motor speed. Works great. I had to made a stop at one end for the barrel to bump up against. I could not get the rollers perfectly parallel so the barrel tended to creep to one end.

Reply to
Wally

It really does provide a lot of satifaction to fix something, especially something that other people value and appreciate.

As a followup, the tuner installed the repaired damper rod and the happy owner says the piano plays fine. I even got a free meal out of the deal!

chuck

Reply to
Chuck Sherwood

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