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Posted

Well for some of us spending a-lot money on an instrument that we want is a tuff sell to our partner, in my case, the wife,

I've always dreamed of a real piano but after playing quite a few I found that I',m talking now at about $12,000 at least. Wife said,"YA Right".

so I thought, I'm pretty good at woodworking so I could pick up an old piano and re-build it!

I got obsessed and over eight years I picked up 13 baby grand pianos and read and tried my best to end up with a nice piano!

Well after eight years I felt it was time to give UP! Photos at (www.woodfab.com)

I have to say I did learn a lot about pianos.

Now that I'm thinking about building some Guitars, I think it will be cool to build some Guitars out of wood salvaged out of 100 years old pianos.

A lot of the  wood I salvaged is maple  from behind the key-bed and some cross supports .

 

It will be interesting to see 100 year old wood to produce music again! image.thumb.jpeg.49030cae075843e8bfa2753a36170af7.jpeg

  • Like 2
Posted

Holy 88 Batman!

How many of the 13 ended up being not playable at all? I have tried piano a bit and noticed that some seem to almost play by themselves similarly to well adjusted guitars so supposedly I understand what you were after in trying to rebuild a banger to a dream instrument. You certainly made them look nice! And the skills you've learned are universal, you can adapt them to most any instrument or any woodworking.

I've been toying with the idea of salvaging wood from an old piano - they seem to give them away even for free! - but I don't have the space to do that. Maybe in the summer in the yard under a garden pavilion if the forecast says sunny for a week or so?

Anyhow, giving a new musical life to old tonewood (it has produced tone so it's tonewood, end of that debate) is a sustainable idea.

  • 1 year later...
Posted

I just saw your reply,

All 13 got cut up.  One got so close to playable. 

Fixed all case veneer damage, six coats of lacquer, made new pin-block, re-finished plate. re-covered key-tops, new dampers,

replaced all hammers, all new strings, etc.

Then about three months of working on mating the hammers and dampers to the strings, string stretching and tuning. 

Well after all that I felt it was time to throw in the towel.

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