Studio Tour: Of Soundboards & Ornaments

One of the first things I notice when inspecting a newly acquired piano is the soundboard. Trapped inside the case, between super thick posts on the outside and an extremely heavy frame on the inside is this gorgeous sheet of wood panels, arranged diagonally and held together by glue and wood strips. Spruce is the wood of choice for the construction of the soundboard because of its high elasticity and superior reverberant quality.

Every time my son and I take a piano apart, I ask him to spare the soundboard because the beautiful wood begs to be used as art. He saves what he can, but it is extremely difficult to extricate the wood on account of the many obstacles between me and that lovely spruce panel. Let me explain.

The desk and footboard usually come off without tools. After that, a screwdriver helps us remove the lid, shelf, and fall board. Next come the keys, which slide easily off their pins. Four thumb screws hold the action in place, and sometimes those require a little elbow grease to turn. But once they are out of the way, the entire action (all 5,110 pieces, give or take a few) comes off together.

Next comes the “fun” part, removing the strings and tuning pins. There are 88 keys on a piano, but roughly 220 strings and corresponding tuning pins. The lower notes have 2 strings each, and the higher ones have 3 strings each, to make the pitches louder and easier to hear. Hundred-year-old pianos have captured a lot of dust, making the work at this stage both hard and dirty. As far as removing the strings goes, our favorite method so far is to cut them with bolt cutters. Wire cutters aren’t strong enough, and aviation snips aren’t much better. We could turn them completely off the pins, but then we’re left with a curly wire at the end that catches on everything. Not only that, but one day my sunglasses saved me from what would have been an ugly accident when a string popped into my face. I wear safety glasses now.

As for the tuning pins, we used whatever we could find to remove them from our first piano, including vise grips and a bit brace. When we started getting more pianos, I decided it was time to also get the right tools. A tuning hammer does a good job, but it’s still rather slow going. Then I got one with a crank handle, but it pops off the pin when we try to go fast. Now I have a power drill bit designed to fit tuning pins. It’s waiting in my toolbox for our next piano....

When the piano is pretty much gutted, we remove the legs, side arm (the part shaped like a baby grand piano), and key bed, leaving only the back of the cabinet with the soundboard and frame. Usually by this point, there is not enough weight on the front to keep the piano upright, and we need to lay it down quickly and carefully. A couple old mattresses serve to cushion the fall when we can’t drop it in the grass. With the piano on its back, we can remove the bottom pieces and the pedals. Then we begin the process of getting all the screws and bolts out of the frame. I do what I can to help, but the rest of the work is pretty much up to my son. Bear in mind that the cast iron frame alone weighs 150-250 lbs., depending on the size of the piano, so it is held very securely in place. Sometimes the screws will strip and the bolts will refuse to turn, so my son has been known to take a sledge hammer to the frame to break it in pieces, and he has also put an ax through parts of the soundboard, as I stood by, wincing at every crack in the beautiful spruce. Eventually we separate wood from metal, and he gets his frame (for scrapping) and I get what’s left of the soundboard. :)

It usually takes the two of us a good 4-6 hours to get the soundboard out of the piano, but the rest of the work isn’t so bad. I clean the surface dust off with a foxtail brush, then pop the wood strips (ribs) off the back. Two bridges are also fastened to the front of the soundboard, and sometimes I can’t get them off, so I work around them. It helps to let the soundboard sit outside in the sun. When it’s nice and warm, the glue softens and the pieces come apart much more readily. When taken apart, I usually end up with strips of spruce about 3-8 inches wide and as much as four feet long. At this point I take the strips to the bathtub to wash them thoroughly, then I let them air dry.

So here I have all this beautiful wood in long thin strips, and the idea comes to me to cut it into diamond shapes to make Christmas ornaments. Using a table saw with a jig blade, I cut each strip to a uniform width, then turned it and cut off the length to match the width. I sanded the edges smooth, then drilled holes in one corner for the string to go through. On the prettier side I used a paint pen to write various phrases such as, “Sing praise to God,” “Rejoice in the Lord,” “Sing unto the Lord,” and even “Ring unto the Lord.” After all, these ornaments were intended as gifts for the members of our church choir and my daughter’s handbell choir (i.e. ringers). Another piano that was given to us had some interesting stickers that looked more like bells than sticks. They popped off the wippen fairly easily, and I cleaned them up and painted some silver and some gold, then added them to the larger ornaments. On the back side, I personalized the ornaments by adding the name of the group and the year. I made other ornaments from hammers and personalized them too. These did not take nearly as much time, but they look really nice hanging on the Christmas tree.

Although I personally do not even look at Christmas items in the store until after Thanksgiving, I will get on the bandwagon when it comes to selling my Christmas ornaments and trees. You can look for them to show up in my store bright and early on November 1st. And yes, personalization will be an option!

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