NoteWorthy Pianos

Happy Independence Day! I'm extremely grateful for all those in our history that made our country what it is today; the prevalence of music, especially the many pianos and the opportunity to tune them, is very unique to America. I celebrated the day with family after listening to the Stars and Stripes Forever by John Philip Sousa!

In the world of piano technology, little measurements can make huge differences. While rebushing the keys for my 1904 Mason and Hamlin upright, I realized that my normal rebushing cauls (used to clamp the new felt into the mortise while the glue sets) were too large... front to back. Normally, mortise sizes can vary, with the most common being either a gap of .125", .137", or .146" left to right, and I have different caul sizes for those types of keys. This piano is unique in that the mortise was .146", but the gap length was .03" smaller than usual, so my cauls just barely wouldn't fit. Since the key buttons (which contain the mortises) were in good shape, I chose not to replace them with new ones, which would give me a bigger hole, but rather decided to order new custom cauls for this piano, and any future pianos that have this issue.

The new cauls worked great, but I had a new problem: the cloth I use for rebushing was ALSO too thick! I love any excuse to pull out my guillotine felt cutter, and I used it to slim down my bushing cloth, so that finally, I was able to finish this custom key bushing job. I still have to wait for more supplies to come in so I can finish cutting new felt for the capstans, but it's one step closer to being a new piano!

Last month I reinstalled a pedal for a recording tech, which was a fun job! It had broken in two during a move years ago, and my brother-in-law was able to weld it back together - it works great now! Unfortunately, the pedal only came out of the piano because it was in two pieces, but to get it back in required tilting the piano to access the bottom board, remove it, and install the pedal from underneath. His antique piano now has all three pedals functioning!