The piano I learned on was just delivered! It’s a Baldwin upright (Acrosonic model) that has spent most of its forty-seven years in the foggy half of San Francisco.
After we kids all left home, my folks moved the piano to a storage room and forgot about it. It suffered some mishaps: A leak in the room above, poor air quality (cooking grease and cigarette smoke), careless painters, and the ever-present mildew problem. But it sounds fine, so I moved it down here to southern California.
The first thing I did was look inside the bottom section. There are bits of wood inside the case, which you can see in the attached picture. (Forgot to include something to indicate the size, but the screw head is 3/8-inch.)
Then I threw out the mothballs, because the smell was giving me a headache. I’ll have to find something else to protect the wool felt in the piano.
There are black spots of mold/mildew inside, on both wood and metal. I am torn between
(a) doing nothing in the hope that they stay dormant, or
(b) dabbing the spots with a 10% bleach solution, followed immediately by a wipe with clean water and then a dry towel.
The piano mover suggested Murphy’s Oil Soap to clean the grease and cigarette smoke off the finished wood.
Any suggestions as to what to tackle first, and how?
Janet
Replies
The first thing I would suggest you do is get an experienced piano tuner or restorer to give you an expert opinion on the condition of the various felt, leather, and fabric components in the action. If these are in bad shape, it will take a fair amount of parts and labor to make them right.
Another thing he, or she, will look at is the condition of the strings and tuning pegs. If the pegs are badly rusted they can't be turned and then the piano can't be tuned. Repairing or replacing the pegs and strings can cost much more than the piano is worth.
I've been involved in a few "free" piano projects and have learned the hard way to look at a badly cared for piano very closely before getting committed to taking the instrument.
Hope this helps and good luck,
John White, Shop Manager, Fine Woodworking Magazine
Edited 10/2/2006 6:04 pm ET by JohnWW
The good news: Before making any decision, I called the SF Conservatory of Music and hired their piano technician to assess the condition of the piano. He said that despite the things I described, it was still in fine shape and definitely worth keeping and transporting. Bad news: Hmm, I didn't think to ask what needed replacing. All I wanted was the bottom-line assessment, keep-it/junk-it.Since an old piano needs to be tuned in stages, I figured on doing the first tuning myself, with the goal of bringing the strings up to tension. Then hire a professional to do the real tuning. Have you ever tried this?Janet
Presumably, if the technician said it was worth keeping he didn't find any problems that would require very expensive repairs. I don't know anything about the actual process of tuning so I can't help you with how to start the process, it might be worth talking to the tech again.
John W.
I forgot to ask: What do you use to clean gunk off of finished wood?Janet
Start with a detergent such as Simple Green, diluted 10 to 1, the dilution they recommend for regular cleaning. After that you can move up to paint thinner or naphtha which might be needed for hardened cooking grease. After that, alcohol will sometimes remove gunk that the detergent and paint thinner/naphtha didn't remove.
None of these should damage the old finish on a piano unless it was finished with shellac which would be very uncommon, but it doesn't hurt to test each solvent on a hidden area first. The finish on the piano will probably be damaged by lacquer thinner or anything containing MEK.
Stains and mildew may need to be bleached out. I would start with drug store hydrogen peroxide, followed by Oxi-Solve an oxygen based household bleach and cleaner, followed by dilute chlorine bleach if the first two don't work.
John W.
International Piano supply has any piano part and tuning equipment you need to restore a piano. They have an about $45.00 min order so if you get the tuning supplies including an inexpensive tuinng meter (around $25) and a tuning kit it should be about $100.00. They also have books on piano tuning. It is really quite easy. I tune my own grand whenever it gets off and have a technician look at it once a year or so.
All,
A local piano tuner, Andrew Opporknockity, has a great reputation. The only problem is you can never get him to come back, after he's been to work on your piano, for, as we all know, Opporknockity only tunes once.
Hahahahhhh,
Ray
Thank you for all the advice--and the joke, too. :)Baldwin is still existance as a subsidiary of Gibson (I think they make guitars). There is a serial number carved into the back of the piano, so I called Baldwin and left a message asking if they still have information on my piano, especially the kind of finish used. It will probably take a few days to hear from them.Janet
Edited 10/3/2006 5:50 pm ET by jyang949
I left out some important information: The finish on my piano is *not* a traditional "piano finish." The cherry wood was stained and given a clear finish.According to Google, "piano finish" usually means painting the wood black and adding a hard, shiny coat. It's what you see on a concert grand piano. The finish reminds me of Japanese lacquerware, except it is even shinier. Personally, I'd rather see the wood. So, I'd really better wait until I hear from Baldwin before cleaning the outer woodwork.Janet
Professional piano technicians will tell you that they can tune a piano, but they can't tuna fish.
Plink plink.
Bob,
Q: What's that sound you hear when you drop a piano down a mineshaft?
A: A flat miner
Hot-cha-cha-cha, piano jokes, I got a million of 'em
I've only tuned one piano, and it was a write off by the techs.How did they know it was a write off? well, they put a torque wrench on a cupple of the upper register pins to see if the torque required to turn the tuning pin was sufficient to hold the pin in place. And it wasn'tThe bottom line was that they could try "hammering the pins). ie drive the pins in a thread, but with no gaurantee that this would 1) be successful or 2) last. The other option was to go with oversized tuning pins. The bottom line was that the worst case would be about 1.5k$ labour with no gaurantee that the piano would hold the tuning for even a short period of time. His assessment, was that for that amount of money, you can buy a tunable piano. I passed on the initial offering, only to have the fella drop the piano in my driveway free when he found it was indeed unsaleable.I love gizmos. Indeed when I was about 8 I succesfully butchered a player piano. So, with a few dollars of investment in a tuning hammer, a micrometer to measure wires, a book from the library, I got the sucker in "tune" kind of. My source for tools was Pianophile.com and I had fun. Piano tuning is indeed an art as well as a craft, and if you've ever seen a piano tuner at work, well they only have to have one little tool case, and they ain't got much competition either. (I hesitate to say it's a sunset industry, but it may well be)If you get into it, the puppy comes apart quite easily, with a tad of reading the basic principles of tuning ain't that hard to grasp, and finishes can be renewed. Expect to break a few strings, (hence the micrometer)Fear of failure? If you've ever seen the piano in resurrection hall in N.O., (if it's still there, I betcha it's got a tad more muddy sonority, but you woulda seen what kind of sh*t and abuse an instrument can take and still put out. An addendum,..... all the (old) piano tuning books I has read generally has, somewhere in the preface, the statement that anyone who plays a piano should have a basic understanding how to tune one, cause yer gonna have to do it sooner of later. As for finish, rehab it, overspray with a shading laquer, or strip it down. I oversprayed it. It was a fun project. all in all. And hey, if you wanna be crassly commercial about it, you can refinish it and buy a fake Steinway decal to put on it.Eric in Calgary
"J",
The first thing the piano company asked us to check was the sound board. If it has a bad glue joint near the corner, then there wasn't a Major problem. But it the sound board had long splits or glue joint failures, then the repair cost elevates quickly.
Bill
Is there any reason I should not use a can of compressed air to blow dirt away from the interior parts? The label says "contains propellant" but doesn't specify what kind, just to "use in well-ventilated area." In use, the can gets very cold (something about Boyle's Law) so I wonder if will cause thermal shock or excessive drying. Janet
Typically the duster cans are filled with an environmentally safe Freon and it shouldn't do any harm to your piano.
Pianos were almost always finished with a lacquer but it is possible that the piano could have been stripped and refinished. In any case neither water and detergent or paint thinner/naphtha will damage any of the common finishes, although if the finish is disintegrating any solvent might remove the areas that are in the worst shape, but if that happens the old finish was beyond salvage anyway.
Alcohol will dissolve shellac but it is very unlikely your piano was shellac finished unless it was stripped and refinished sometime after it left the factory. It is simple to test for shellac, just rub a hidden area on the piano with a swab dipped in alcohol, if the finish is shellac, the spot will become sticky in seconds. I included shellac as a third solvent to try, after trying detergent and paint thinner, because I have found on occasion that alcohol will remove dirt that the first two left behind.
John W.
Edited 10/4/2006 1:20 pm ET by JohnWW
Janet
So far all the advice (especially from John) has been very good. I don't think I would worry too much about trying to get the inside of the case clean and shiney. You can use a long vaccuum extension with the brush head to clean out the inside. Be wary of using anything with water in it on or near the harp (the big gold colored metal casting) since its made of cast iron and you could induce rust. My guess is the exterior is a laquer like John suggested. For starters, try something like pledge and see how that works.
Since you got an ok from the technician, I think the next thing to do is get it tuned up. Just so you are aware, most of what goes bad on pianos is the pin block which is a very thick piece of plywood that all the tuning pins are hammered into. It tends to dry out after awhile and then the pins end up being too loose and they dont hold the strings well enough to keep it in tune. Strings can loose some of their tension over the years and eventually some or all will have to be replaced. Parts in the action can eventually wear out, but usually its only one thing or another, not everything at once. A 47 year old piano is not that old, and is a much better instrument than some of this new stuff coming from overseas. Baldwin was always a good name, not quite up there with Steinway, but still a very good brand.
EvilTwin,Baldwin is a decent brand, although I don't know where this particular model ranks in their line-up. Back then, my folks were students with no money to spare, but they were determined to give us musical training. They bought a piano that was sorta used but never refinished: The store's floor model. As this clearly was the biggest investment they had ever made, we kids were forbidden to play near the piano, and we had to wash our hands before touching it. One day I accidentally dropped a dime between high B and C, but was afraid to admit it.As soon as the piano was delivered, I opened up the bottom and searched for the dime, which would have been silver and kind of a funny memento. Alas, all I found were two 1957 wheat pennies and a Business Reply Card for a NY insurance company. No zip code on the card, so it must be old.Janet
Jyang949
It seems like you know a bit about piano's
Could you tell me anything about mine?
It's a Holland made in Menomonie Wisconsin. The decal under the lid says that it sells for $400.00 it's black walnut with a shellac finish. Upright grand is what the dealer who sold it to me claimed it is.
I originally bought it to put thumbtacks in the felts to get the Honky Tonk sound but it sounds so nice I just left it the way it is...
Frenchy,Ha! Fooled you! My knowledge of pianos is limited to the books I borrow through Inter-Library Loan, plus whatever pops up in Google. You have to be careful with Internet information. A lot of it is just plain wrong.There are websites where you can look up your piano by serial number, and other sites that charge for the service. From what I read at http://www.bluebookofpianos.com, Holland made fine pianos under three brand names.Janet
Edited 10/25/2006 2:48 pm ET by jyang949
Once upon a very long time ago I strove to be a piano repairman. I was learning from my Grandfather who had learned from his. To make a long story short, I didn't have the "ears" for tuning. In those days we had no electronic tuning tools, only tuning forks. A good piano repairman can wiggle certain center keys and tell if the action will need to be "re-felted". Pianos are primarily hard-rock maple (or plastic) with hinge mechanisms consisting of a steel pin through a felt bearing. There are many of these in a piano action (the striking mechanism). If this was a "church" piano, the middle C, F, G, and octive down G will be worn the worst and will give an indication of the overall piano health. Ditto for pianos used by lots of learning students. Classical instruments have a much more even wear because of the music complexity. Often an old piano will need "bridal straps", which is a cloth and leather strip that jerks the hammer back from the string. With age these dry up and rot out. If keys stick it can be the keys or the straps. If all the keys work, don't stick, and nothing buzzes or rattles when the piano plays, there is very good possibility that you have an excellent instrument. Even rusted tuning pins shouldn't prevent its tuning.
I wouldn't suggest that you try to work on the action yourself. Bring in a qualified repair person to do that. Just be careful as you refinish to protect the complex inner workings.
Is it a full upright or a spinet? (less than 5') If it is a full upright you can remove most of the panels for refinishing quite easily. Spinets are a bit more finicky but still are only held together by a few latches and screws.
Open the top.
Identify the latch(es) for the front panel. These are normally clips or sliding blocks on each side.
After removing the front panel you should see screws for the keyboard cover at each end. Be careful as these are old steel screws that can break or cam out very easily. Use the right size screwdriver. They will be large.
Remove one, two, or three screws at each end of the keyboard cover. It should easily lift out. At this point you should see all of the action and the keys.
Remove the kick panel (in front of your feet) by pressing up on a large metal clip in the center of the top of the panel. Some builders used slightly different methods, but nearly all release this way. Swing the top towards you and lift off of the small bottom pegs.
If this is an upright piano, there will be three or four metal standards that divide the hammers into groups. At the top of those standards are either brass, steel, or chrome knurled knobs (about 1/2" diameter). Unscrew those and store them where you will not lose them. Grab the two center standards and swing top of the action towards you to clear the studs into the soundboard. You can now carefully lift the whole mechanism out of the case and store it in a safe place. This will leave you with the case, the soundboard, harp, strings, and pedals.
You can gently lift the keys off of the key pins, but not before you either a) check and make sure there is a number stamped on the top, or b) put a small piece of tape on top of each one and number them 1-88. Sorting non-numbered keys is something I only did once... Store them where the overhanging ivory will not get chipped. (A piano of this age probably has real ivory white keycaps and ebony blacks)
You can remove the pedals by removing the screws at each end of the mechanism. Don't lose the springs or the action rods.
Now it should be much easier to refinish as you have access to the edges of everything and have no "crevices" to try to sand. Having said that, here is a word of warning... Old pianos are full of dry, old wood. Don't force anything. It should come apart VERY easily with the exception of getting screws loosened. If not, STOP. It means that some well-intending soul thought they should glue, weld, or attach somthing that shouldn't have been.
If there is interest, I can post pictures of these things from a more modern piano (mine).
Bill in CA
Edited 10/4/2006 10:45 pm ET by CaptainChaos
Well, I definitely would like to see Bill's piano pictures.I have a new question, this time about the piano bench. Unlike the rest of the woodwork, the top plane of the lid had a finish that was clear, shiny, and hard. Brittle, too, it seems; there are several chips in the finish that left shallow holes down to the wood.The holes show that the finish was applied in two layers, the bottom slightly thicker than the top. Together the layers measure about 1/64-inch. It got sticky when I tried a spot of rubbing alcohol. Any idea what it is?Because of the holes in this thick, glassy finish, I am not sure how to proceed. Remove the existing whatever-it-is, and reapply so it all looks smooth again? Fill in the holes and put another layer on top?Janet
I normally hire a piano tech, but one left me with a tip regarding tuning. For pianos that are not regularly tuned, he always loosened the string a bit first. He said if you tighten first, you risk snapping off the wire if it's slightly stuck in place.
Good tip, thanks. Here's one I learned from a DIY tuner: If you turn the wrench but don't hear a change in sound, STOP TURNING. You have the wrench on the wrong pin!Janet
Edited 10/11/2006 5:01 pm ET by jyang949
If you value the piano, you would be well served to have a service call by a Registered Piano Technician. He/she can advise regarding the finish, pitch the piano and tune properly. You will spend more money buying tools than you will save on the initial call.
HTH,
DP
I've tuned both pianos and autoharps, just as a DIY. It's not hard if you're patient; a cheap tuner is about $30 -- you don't have to use a $200 strobe tuner -- and the wrench is under $20 (the autoharp wrench came with the instrument). Of course, when you tune it the following year there's no cost at all.My goal is for my work to outlast me. Expect my joinery to get simpler as time goes by.
DP,Of course you're right about not taking risks with something irreplaceable. I put strict limits on this project: Minor clean-up only, and no mechanical repairs. I figured a partial tuning wouldn't hurt.The bench was a different matter. I couldn't see any way to fix the thick, glassy finish on the lid/seat, plus I always wanted to try my hand at refinishing. I used a Minwax product that promised to clean and restore the finish without stripping. Ugh, what a mess. At least I got refinishing out of my system. The bench also needs a new bottom so it can be used to store music. It hasn't had one for about thirty-five years, ever since a foolish girl decided to see what would happen if she sat on it. :)Janet
Janet,
I will try to get some pictures taken this evening and posted.
Bill in N. CA
Well, here are a batch of pictures. Your piano may vary quite a bit, but most work this way... I would second the recommendation to seek professional help for your instrument. Refinishing the case is a woodworking job. Messing with ANY of the musical parts is best left to those with training. Pianos are amazingly complex mechanisms that are easy to muck up...
Edited 10/12/2006 2:09 am ET by CaptainChaos
Bill, What is the brand and age of the piano in those pictures? There are no plastic parts in mine, and the keys are not numbered. Makes sense, though.Janet
My piano is a Wurlitzer bought new in '86.
Bill in N. CA
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