Music From Marshall

Frame is out and soundboard has now been refinished...

2012-02-06T10:53:00.000-08:00

Now that the frame is out, the soundboard has been cleaned down and sanded. After cleaning and sanding the finish has been applied to make it look new and shiny again. Here are before and after pictures below...

Above: shows after the cleaning and sanding of the soundboard was done.

Above: Shows a lovely refinished soundboard.

Strings, cast iron frame and pin block removed tonight...

2012-01-23T18:22:00.000-08:00

Tonight removed the remaining strings, cast iron frame and pinblock. The cast iron frame will be placed aside to be cleaned and repainted, the pinblock is still in good shape and will be reused only with a larger size pin.

Above: Shows after the strings and tuning pins were removed.

Above: Is an area of the sound board that was rubbed down to see the beautiful grain of the wood under the dirt from years of wear on the piano.

Above: My dad's hands rubbing down the "short bridge" of the piano to see the grain of the wood.

Above: Showing the pinblock before I removed it out of the piano.

Above: Another picture of the pinblock removed from the piano.

Cable Baby Grand Restoration - Removal of Bass Strings

2012-01-09T13:19:00.000-08:00

Now that the dampers were removed (see last blog post), the bass strings can be removed from the piano.

The above picture shows the bass strings where they will be disconnected from the pins before they are removed from the piano. As you can see it appears someone once spray painted gold on them. Not sure why unless they were just doing a "quick" restoration job that did not include removing the strings. But when these strings are replaced you will not only see new shiny strings but new shiny silver pins which I will also be replacing.

Above picture: on the further end of the piano you will find the bass bridge (fortunately there is no splitting) and it looks in good enough shape to reuse.

Above: In the above picture you can see where the pin bushing around the pin is cracked. All the pin bushings will be replaced.

Above: on the above bass string which I removed, you will see my thumb is pointing to what is called a "becket" a tuner regularly uses a "becket breaker" when cutting the strings out. I used used a really good pair of side cutters and cut the string right flush with the tuning pin.

Above: In this picture I'm showing all the bass strings that have been removed and they are all grouped on a piece of brass wire. They are in order from lowest note to highest note and will be sent off to my piano supplier to be duplicated professionally.

Above: This picture shows the piano without the bass strings in it.

Cable Baby Grand Restoration - Removal of Dampers

2012-01-09T12:34:00.000-08:00

After removing the keybed including the piano action and storing it in a safe place, I removed all of the piano dampers. In a nutshell piano dampers stop the string from vibrating and they must be removed before removing the strings.

The dampers in this piano look in fair condition, in most restorations the felts would be replaced completely. However, since there is still some life left in these, I'm going to reuse them at the end of this piano restoration and later down the road I may replace them.

Since I'm going to reuse them after I restring the piano, I'm carefully removing these and placing them in groups each numbered so I know where they go when I place them back in the piano.

Above are 3 damper bodys with the wire attached, these still have the old damper felt on them.

Above are all my damper bodys grouped together.

This picture shows where the damper body wires enter the damper block. The damper block holds all the damper wires in place. The damper block is where I disconnect wires so each damper body may be removed gently from the piano.

Cable Baby Grand Restoration

2012-01-08T14:54:00.001-08:00

I aquired this old Cable baby grand piano which whould not hold a tune and basically needs lots of attention and work done to bring life back to the piano. I'm in the process of restoring it and will share the updates of my restoration of the piano through this blog.

Below are pictures of the piano when it was first picked up from the location it was stored at. The pedals have been removed on these pictures but they will be placed back on the piano when the restoration job is completed.