Some of what Piano work entails...

This is what I have been doing for the last week. The first two raw pictures of the grand lid were taken in the house at Gerrards Cross.
By last Saturday and facing yet more hours of fruitless labour with all the incredible water damage, and rippled thick veneer that had probably been in that state for years and hardened terribly....I was just about ready to give up.
But I was able to devise fresh techniques for bringing the lid back to being flat again.
I restuck the veneer that didn't have enough original glue left using that traditional bone glue you heat in what looks like a cauldron.
Then I began again from scratch staining the veneer black, in order to then build up the polish again with black stained shellac french polish.
This is the traditional furniture finish which allows the wood to breathe and brings up wood grain when it isn't stained matt black.
It is however very susceptible to water damage which is how the problem occurred. These pics and more of my work life can be seen on Piano-s in Facebook, and my website www.piano-s.com

This month...

Just so you all know, this month I am restoring a grand piano for somebody. Although I began in October, with halfterm and having some kind of virus, i was effectively wiped out for a week.The job must be completed by end of November.


This is the joblist:
Strip the whole piano down to bare wood, and stain medium brown, and french polish  (Shellac laquer).
Send away all white keys to be recovered in grained celluloid ivory lookalikes....(no elephants, right!)
Strip of all the old string set and tuning pins
Respray the metal frame (see picture)
Restore soundboard
Send away all bass string rubbing to get a bespoke set made for the piano from a stringmaker
Replace all treble wire strings and tuning pins (pegs)   and all bass strings and pins.
Replace all string felts, cut to measure
Replace all the damper felts
Tune gazillions of times until stable
Set up the piano action to all the new parts
Repair loose flapping bits of veneer

So you can see....my time at the moment is limited