the problems multiply

So. As the author of Beowulf puts it.

My plan to put on a fresh set of shiny new key tops is quashed by necessity. By simple arithmetic. The joys of restoring an antique instrument!

Presently, piano dimensions are somewhat standardized. Certainly one company may make a 6 foot 8 inch instrument and another a 6 foot 9 inch, but some things, like the octave span, are fixed. Nowadays, that span is 6 1/2 inches.

You may recall that I noticed that some of my replacement ivory keys, which had been salvaged from superannuated instruments, were a little wide. I began to take measurements, and do some internet research, and I found out that 6 1/2 standard for octaves. That means each white key top is 28/32 of an inch in width, or 7/8.
However, my Mathushek has an octave of 6 3/8 inches, and keys 27/32 of an inch.

So, ho, that means a new set of keys will not install on my keyboard. I am left now with gluing back the snaggle toothed keys, and using a few of the replacement keys that are narrower than modern standard.

Which means I need to see what kind of stuff I can use to fill the chunks missing in my keys. Some kind of plastic filler that will dry hard, and which I can sand down, at least to fill the holes. Oh well, I wanted to keep the ivory anyway, now I have to.

I was just joking yesterday with my friend Brad OB, when we were watching a TV show. Someone said, "Well, on to Plan B," and I said, "That's never a good sign."
But on to Plan B it is.

And there is a real problem that I have not yet discussed with you folks, which I have no real idea how to finesse. It involves the strings, so I will put that off for the time being.

contemporaneous advert

New York Daily Tribune Wed Sept 11, 1867

A GREAT SOUL IN A SMALL BODY,

NEW INVENTION IN PIANOS.

THE MATHUSHEK PIANOS recently invented by Mr. Frederick Mathushek (author of the principal improvements in pianos), differ from all Others in having the strings cross the frame in both directions. This equalizes the strain upon the frame, and insures greater durability and longer continuance in tune than can be had by any other method. The BRIDGE also, runs the whole length of the sounding-board, an entirely new feature, which gives greater power and better tone than is found in any other instruments.

The smallest size square, the Colibri, four feet nine inches long, seven octaves, equals in all respects the full size of other makers; while the full size, the ORCHESTRAL, is equal to any CONCERT GRAND.

FRANZ SCHLOTTER, the eminent pianist, says: "The COLIBRI I consider the chef d’oeuvre in the musical world, its tone is not equaled by the largest sized square or upright Pianos of any factory in this country."

H. MOLLENHAUER, of  the Conservatory of Music, says: “ I with great pleasure bear my unqualified testimony to the great superiority of the Mathushek Pianos over all others."

Many other testimonials equally strong have been freely given. Please call and examine, or send for Descriptive Circular to. BARLOW

Guess who's back--/--/--Shady's back!

I have been away for a while.
I still have to get the new habit of blogging regularly. I have been working on the instrument, but not sitting down and recording it.

So, what have I done? (with pictures)


1)  I finally got my parts, so I reassembled the keyboard, with new felt punchings.

The keyboard still needs to be leveled, but before I do that, I have to deal with the broken key tops.  More of that later.

So, I put all the keys back, and reinstalled the Hammer Shank Rail, preparatory to reassembling the instrument, for a trial. Here is what it looked like before I put it back together.

 In the meantime, I have been working on my patio garden. Here are pictures:

   So, what I have to do now is make some key decisions about the keytops. (See what I did there? That's cause I am a writer!) I ordered so far, 14 ivories from International Piano Supply, at $4 a pop. Half of them are too white. I am going to write and see if I can send them back for some yellower ones. I am also considering swapping some of the extreme high and low keys, for the missing keys in the center of the keyboard, and then putting the replacements on the ends of the keyboard. Unfortunately, on this instrument almost half the white keys could use replacing. Certainly no fewer than 21 of the 55 white keys are visibly broken on the edges. There are two I could overlook, and three I have filed the small chips smooth, but maybe I should just put a set of plastic keytops on for the visual beauty. Ivory is nice if it is uniform, but that may be a problem. I dont know yet.

  Anyway, I put it back together, and now, for the first time on the internet, is the sound of 1867.  This is David Sonsara, my teacher, playing the Beethoven variations on a theme by Paisiello, just the sort of music appropriate to this instrument. Take it away, David!

 




As you can see, it plays very nicely. It needs key leveling, as I said before, and it needs regulation very badly, but the worst key, middle G, I think I fixed. The hammer back-check needed adjustment. It was impeding the rise of the hammer on the key strike. I bent the wire back a couple millimeters, and I think that solved that problem. But I won't know until I put it all back together again, and that won't be for a while, now.

 I am at a kind of standstill right now. I have to decide what to do with the keyboard, so I can level it, then I can regulate the mechanism, and refinish the hammers, and then I can put it back together to see how it works.

Then the strings!

Waiting for the Postman

I guess I should add an entry, for the benefit of my millions of readers. I just made a big order, felt and paper punchings to level the keyboard. And a bunch of miscellaneous pieces of felt, and another dozen ivory key tops. Now I will have 14. I counted 25 chipped keys, with about 11 of them very badly chipped. I guess I am committed to ivory.

I have finished polishing the 85 individual keys with 00 steel wool, and brushed out the flanges and pin holes. Some interesting finds. Two of them are signed. The 85th key is signed in pencil, on the side, "Dahlquist". And the first key is signed in pencil "Dahlquist", but in a different handwriting! What to make of that? Father and son? The foreman wrote Dahlquist's name on the job, and he signed it at the end? He had a stroke between key 1 and key 85??? Key No. 1 is also stamped with the name E. Larson, with a punch stamp. And the first set of keys has 5 and 3 punched on them in the vicinity of the action. Wish I knew what it all meant.

Of course, I haven't been able to play it for a month now. Don't know when I will be able to again. Probably in a couple months, when I get the action all regulated.

But I have been playing my Kawai, which I was badmouthing so bad in the first entry. I should apologize to my poor little upright. It's a very nice piano. I and preparing for piano club next Saturday. I will play Diabelli variation No. 2, which is a real devil, and the first movement of Sonata VIII by Friedrich Wilhelm Rust, my current favorite obscure composer.

Piano Club is a monthly social for about a dozen or two of us who like to play, but are not Paderewski, so we play for each other. It is a very diverse group of men and women, many quite proficient in various genres. About half are like me, slaves to the page, and half can improvise freely from a lead sheet, or ad libitum. I am so jealous, I wish I could do that. It is a mystery to me why I can sit here and type out my thoughts as words on this keyboard, but I can't type out my thoughts as music on the piano.

But having joined Piano Club has changed my entire outlook on practice. Now that I have the prospect of performing, I can't overlook my little glitches, like I did when I was just playing for myself. Now I focus on the mechanics of the finger fumble, and figure out where I got lost. When I was playing just for myself, I just ran the right stuff through my head, and ignored my actual performance. But you can't do that for other people. So I am still not Paderewski, but I am learning how to study for performance now, and making leaps and strides in my execution.

Yay. Also I get to share my obscure music with other people, which is even better. Next month I am doing Gottshchalk's "Morte: She is Dead", and after that Rossini's "Une Caresse a ma Femme". And I think after that, the Froberger Lamento for Ferdinand III.

someone else's story

http://www.burningbuilding.com/piano.htm

Here is a funny link. It's a story about an expedition working its way through the insides of an upright piano.

Clean Keys and Dirty Keys

Nothing much these days. I am regrouping, and back to slow piece by piece cleaning.

Having removed the hammer shank rail, and pulled out the keys, I am polishing them one by one with 00 grade steel wool. They come off the instrument grey with age and dust, and with the application of steel wool and elbow grease, they are restored to their warm reddish gold hue. The tops are thick with dust, the sides with crystalized sap that has exuded over the last century and a half, and the bottoms are stained from the felts they sit on. Then I spend five minutes on one, and it glows.

I set up my table, and watch an episode of standup comedy on streaming Netflix. Now I wear gloves, after the first couple sessions of chewing up my finger tips with steel wool. I brush off the loose dust with a cotton cloth, then rub down each surface with the wool. Some of the keys are stained from a spill, but that comes out with a good polishing.

It takes five or six minutes to do one key. Ten an hour. Eighty five keys in eight and a half hours. I have about forty left to finish. I have been doing six to ten each morning. Hey, it's my hobby not my job!

I have to order the front rail and balance rail felt and paper punchings. Then I can level the keyboard, and one major task will have been accomplished. Oh, I also have a handful of ivory key tops to put on. I don't know if I should replace the broken ivories, or if I should just install a new set of plastic key tops. I am inclined to the ivory, for authenticity, but a set of new bright keys sure brings a piano to life.

Decisions, decisions.

Well, after my first setback, I took a few days to regroup. I decided to let the dampers wait for a while, and take a look at the action. So, I headed to the thrift store for a work table. I found a nice one for a bargain price, and brought it home.


I removed the key-bed/action, and set it on my table. I took a couple pictures of it like that, but they seem to have disappeared from my camera.
So, first thing, figure out how to get the keys out, for leveling. Hah! Easier said than done. Those keys were locked in there by the hammer rail, and of the 85 keys, I was able to wrangle only about 25 out of the middle section, where there was enough wiggle room to get the first key out, and then contort the next and the next, until I had a set removed.

Boy, was that keybed filthy. There was a hundred fifty years of dust and lint under the keys. The dust was as thick as the felt punchings that sit at the bottom of the key front rail. Nasty!

I took the soft brush to it, and cleaned it all out.

Then, one by one, I removed the felt and paper front rail punchings and ccarefully set them aside in order, white keys in front, black keys in back. Except for being dirty, the felts are in quite good condition.

But now I was stymied. I could not pry any more of the keys out of the action. Now I had to examine the action more closely, to see what needed to be removed.

This is such an elegant little machine. It has the barest minimum of moving parts, unlike modern machines that may have thirty to seventy pieces for each action. There is not much that is liable to regulation. There is a check screw, and there is a pair of adjusting screws for the jack flange, to move it up or down. But that is it!

Again, I am amazed at how well made this is. It is entirely of wood, except for the screws and the cast iron frame. But it is absolutely solid, and the felt parts, the bumpers and so on, are in great condition. The buckskin parts are a little rough, but I can polish them down. I am wondering how many parts I am really going to have to replace in the action. Not a lot.