My Piano (Part II)

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Well, here we are seven years later. I have done a few more small repairs, three or four keys here, an octave there, but even after moving to Florida and then Brazil (where the piano was tipped on its side to fit in the elevator, a short story for another day) I still had 51 delicious soybean elbows completely intact. This is well past the 10-30 year predicted lifespan of this piano. Well, then high E bit the dust and I was organist at church (and therefore had to practice a lot!), something had to be done.

My little helper.

And when I do something, I go all the way. I have been hearing a clicking when using some of the keys just below middle C, so I decided to take out the keys and clean underneath them. Now, before you get scared, know that I had done this multiple times with my parents piano because coins fit great between the keys and pencils fall neatly through the hole behind the music stand.

Well, there were more screws to undo on this compact piano and it didn’t feel quite so sturdy, but I got to the culprit: a nail file. And about a half century’s worth of dust and bug carcasses.

Eeewww!

I got out the vacuum and the dusting mitt and a wet cloth and cleaned those ivories and ebonies like they’ve never been cleaned before- even along the scummy edges.

That was refreshing.

Then I got to work on those pesky elbows. It took me two evenings to crunch away all 51 remaining soybean delicacies.

This is the "action" minus the soybean horsd'vours.



This is the elbow graveyard, the reusable drop wires and the new elbows.



Notice all the fallen keys. Not deemed important enough to replace until now.

So on Sunday I set myself up in the kitchen next to the stove and replaced all those little boogers.



Why the stove, you may ask?

Well, instead of having to screw those pesky little inexpensive beauties onto the drop wires, I heated up that little wire on my gas stove and pushed it into the new plastic elbow.



Total magic.

Then I crawled back under the piano and popped those sucker into their new homes.



And now I have a better-than-just-like-new piano.

Except for the two fabric stringy pieces that broke while I was repairing the elbows. These parts, I just found out, are called “bridle straps.” Apparently this helps the hammers fall back from the strings giving a crisp sound, along with about 40 other moving parts.

Notice the wood piece which is falling farther forward than the rest, and the broken fabric part hanging forward toward the left of the picture.

Well, before I even knew what they were called, I MacGuyvered my own version using pink string and an upholstery needle. Yes I did.

The little wood parts are pretty much in line now. I actually think I untied and redid this one after I took the picture to line it up better.

Now no one can steal my piano and say it is theirs because I know that there are two beautifully tied pink bows holding it together. So I really do have a better-than-just-like-new piano. It still sounds good even though I never did get it tuned.

Take that piano man!

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