Piano Player Repairs

Ok, I have made some configuration changes:

The site now has its own domain: player.crystel.com . This will take you right to the php bulletin board without any more prompting or subdirectories. Plus I can just say to people: "Go to player.crystel.com" for the best in how Chris restores his crazy ...

So one of the reasons the piano was dead was because it could barely play anything. Taking a look at the Duo Art Dynamics box it wasn't hard to understand why....

https://i.imgur.com/iesl8Kj.jpeg

This is the theme dynamics accordion. It's obviously gone, and that looks like extra thin pneumatic ...

Got a reply, here is the issues:

First, Never microwave glue, destroys the bonding power. Got it, won't do that again.

Second: Glue should be the consistency of warm honey. Ok, was pretty much that.

Third: This is the key bit: When gluing key pneumatics to the board, one should use a very thin ...

Interesting. Got up this morning, ran the test roll, and note 14 played *perfectly*! No hiss, no lost air, worked!

Very happy indeed. So I melted down the glue and decided to put on pneumatic 13 and 15.

This is where it gets interesting and I wrote down the processes. In a nutshell 13 went fine ...

Oh this is interesting. When I went underneath to clean up the board I knocked three more off.

Why? They all had the burned glue. I think I found an error that dad or mom did 50 years ago; a batch of the pneumatics did not go on properly and the glue failed.

On the positive side it's limited to 9 ...

Ok, so this evening I had cleaned up the piano's board, re-covered 5 of the units, and was getting ready to install number 14 as a test.

Why 14? Because I re-covered it a few days ago so the glue is dry, it's a nice working bellow, and in addition to not having anything near it (13 is off and 15 is ...

So I have a total of five of the pneumatics off the piano. Yes, the looked good. Yes, they leaked when blown into and sucked with one's mouth. Yes, all were recovered. Here are some pictures.

https://i.imgur.com/8evtksd.jpeg

Here you can see number 13 and 14 together. 14 was re-covered and ...

That's an interesting question. Being that I was seven when I last worked on this there are some gaps in my knowledge but there is a surprising pile of information in here rattling around. So after a bit of work, here we go:

https://i.imgur.com/T7Aqraj.jpeg

Main pump: Operational. Pulls 40 ...

Well, here is a picture of the piano. It was too big to make it to the top floor so we put it in the living room on the first floor.

https://i.imgur.com/qf0pHa0.jpeg

The history is interesting. My dad got it in 1975 or so as a project, and he, my mom, and I spent a year or two getting it ...

Welcome! Well, I didn't see a forum for player pianos that was not on Facebook and since I did not like Facebook I figured I would make my own.

This forum will be dedicated to the repair and restoration of my 1924 George Steck Grand reproducing piano. Basically my dad got it in the 1970's and ...