PiliPili Part II

  

You may remember, some years back, we were invited to look at a piano at a bar in town. It would have cost around £1,000 to make it playable, including import on pieces and labour. The owner decided against it, which is a shame, because it's a 120-year-old Parisian Sébastien Érard. 

Recently, we were back in touch with the owner, as we're experimenting with local alternatives to imported parts, spurred on by our flip-flop hammer venture. In order to test some of our theories, we need a broken action to play with. He's allowed us to take the action from the Érard. If our experiments work, he might just get a working piano out of it. If not, the piano will be pretty much the same as it was before. 

There was just one problem... between now and the last time we saw it, half the humidity of Rwanda seeped into the woodwork and jammed the fallboard. Marion downed a couple of G&Ts and attempted to free it on a night out with friends. That didn't exactly work. So, Desire and Pauline came with her the next time and spent half an hour coaxing it out.

 

  

The humidity has eaten into the strings as well. Lot of rust, but it might just survive long enough to play a few songs. We're a long way off tuning, though. At least it's still got a full set.

 

 

 

 

There's also some interesting details with the soundboard, which doesn't cover the whole of the back of the piano, only the parts behind the strings. This appears to be by design.

 

  

 

Also got most of the original ivories, and the owner has a few salvaged in a bag. We'll replace if we get to that point. You can tell ivory, because the keytops come in two pieces. You can see a fine line along the bottom of the black keys, whereas plastic keytops are usually much brighter in colour and all one piece. You don't tend to see ivory after the Second World War, and it's illegal to trade ivory today, so modern pianos use plastic. 

 

 It's also got a beautiful set of candle sconces. 

 

 

So, we now have the action, which is itself rather a strange beast. It's entirely wood mounted and perhaps a little heavier than a standard action.

 

 

 

 

More to follow on this as we start working. Considering how old it is, the action appears to be in remarkably good working order. The main plan is to try out leather-wrapped wooden hammers to substitute for felt. The flip-flop hammers worked really well but they are also a little expensive and still need to be brought in from Kenya. If we could find a completely local solution, that would make piano repair a lot cheaper.