A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to move two pianos: a Baldwin from Franklin which I picked up and delivered to a client of mine, and an antique Vose and Sons that I took from the client and brought back to my workshop. Since I was on vacation last week (which you can read about here) and was organizing the workshop and ordering tools this week, I hadn't gotten the chance to open up and dig into this new piano until yesterday.
The piano is absolutely deserving of its antique status; while the serial number would place it around 1915-1920, the date written on the back clearly says 1909. Modern piano records are much more thorough compared to records from over 100 years ago, which explains the discrepancy, so we'll go with the written date and place the piano at 114 years old. Considering its age, the fact that the outside wood and finish are still gorgeous and in great condition is amazing. However, the inside has many broken parts and much of it is in desperate need of cleaning.
I don't think the back of this piano has been touched other than moving, so a lot of vacuuming and scrubbing was necessary. I went through a lot of paper towels and scrubbing material to get the caked-up dust to come off and reveal the golden-brown color underneath.
It's a little harder to tell here, but the bottom half of the piano also needed a lot of cleaning. After some more scrubbing and vacuuming, the gray dust no longer covers up the black board and the wooden pedal levers are shining again! I will be able to clean under the strings better in the future when it's time to give it new strings, but that's a long way off.
If you noticed from one of the pictures in the slideshow, there are two missing hammers in the action. I've actually worked on this piano in the past for my client, but two hammers were irreparably damaged (for now!) and so I ended up removing them to make the keys at least press down. In the future I hope to replace those hammers, and repair the action to prevent more hammers from breaking. I also didn't get to cleaning the keys and the bed underneath, but that will be the next step. There's going to be a lot to do on this piano, and it will be a long project, so stay tuned for more! And, if you see anything that I do to it that you think may need to be done to yours, just give us a call to schedule an appointment.
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