Days away.

If things go as planned, the piano will be back in playing shape within a few days. There were some unexpected delays over past month that left the piano out of commission longer than had been expected.

Since the key tops were stained beyond all possibility of cleaning, I decided somewhat hastily to go ahead and replace them during this first round of repairs. Overall this was a good decision, but filing down the the replacement tops to fit was time consuming to say the least.

It can seem overwhelming when thinking about doing any work on a piano, that most anything that gets done is likely going to be done 88 more times, more or less, depending on the task. In the case of replacing the white key tops, only 52 times, but still daunting and tedious.

The dampers shown below had become largely useless, many of the strings continuing to ring even after returning to a sounding string.

The full set of dampers were replaced, including the treble dampers shown below.

The action is back in place and I’m now in the process of returning the keys as they’re finished. Most of the hard work on the key tops has already been done, with mostly some clean-up left to do getting the edges right.