Piano Player Repairs

One of the most important things a player piano needs to be able to do is rewind a roll and shut itself off. This is done by a special signal on the player bar that is supposed to engage a pneumatic to throw the piano into "rewind" mode when it's hit. If this does not happen properly the piano will happily go to the end of the roll and rip it off the bar.

Not something you want to happen.

In addition there is a second hole in the play roll that is opened when the piano has the roll almost completely wound. This does not stop the piano (there is another signal that tells the piano "no paper" and to shut off) but if repeat is selected it will throw a vacuum pneumatic to switch the piano from "rewind" to "play" mode and start playing it again.

This is controlled by a dual pneumatic located under the front of the piano on the right side, under the keys. And on my piano this particular pair of pneumatics was... weak. Partially because the pipes feeding it were loose (no vacuum there) but mainly because it had been broken in the past and the pneumatic cloth is very leaky.



So time to replace it. Dropping it is not hard; 3 screws secure it to the piano and getting the shift lever out is not hard. With it on the table we can now take a look at it and figure out how to recover.



Boy is it dirty. Time to start taking it apart. Goal is to get the old cloth off, recover it, and figure out how to fix those broken arms (fixed with wire? Oh well someone did that....)

First step is to take it apart.

Screws came off easily enough and one of the arms. But the other arm was solidly attached. A little heat from my air gun loosened it up and it finally came off. We'll put those to the side and fix them later....



Taking off the brackets revealed these washers. I thought it was a problem but they came off with a bit of heat and probably never were glued in. Just shock/spacers.



Next step, getting the glue off and the fabric cloth off.

The cloth is a mess. I should have known life would suck when I noticed white glue on the intake ports. Oh great, did dad use WHITE GLUE HERE?



Oh god maybe. This stuff requires a LOT of heat with the air tool; worth having. Almost brought out my SMT air soltering gear, but was able to get things off. Note this is NOT hide glue.



Doing a quick measurement I can see the size is this when opened.

[imghttps://i.imgur.com/i1PP04Q.jpeg[/img]



I wonder if dad sent this out to be rebuilt when the arms broke; the 88 notes all had hide glue as do all of the valves and such so I don't think this was an oversight on Dad's part. Or maybe he just figured screw it. I think I remember when the arms broke and he had to do something to fix it, so it's possible he mailed it to a "professional". Excuse me while I spit.

Oh great, I ran out of pneumatic cloth. Guess I need to send some money and an order to the player piano guy.....

Meantime I'll work on the key pneumatics.