I have access to an old upright piano that is going to be scrapped. I already have salvaged the keys, which I am hoping turn out to be ebony and even maybe ivory. However, I have no idea how to approach recovering the useful parts of the rest of it. Can anyone offer any advise? I know it is veneered, and the veneer has been covered with several layers of paint, but I am hoping the internal wooden structure has some value. I've been told that the large piece of cast iron, that is evidently the most difficult part to move and dispose of, has no salvage value. I suppose it would help if I could identify the maker, the model, and the year it was created. I don't know, but I'm working on that. I suspect that information may be covered with the green paint.
May not be worth the effort. My brother and I disassembled an old upright in order to get it out of the basement of our parent's house. Although we were young and unappreciative of the finer details, I recall that the bulk of the lumber was what I would now identify as poplar. The veneers were mahogany, but not really salvageable. The only part that I remember worthy of salvage was the carved panel covering the soundboard. As we had no use for it, it too was discarded. I have read that the cast iron is under extreme load due to the cumulative string tension. We popped the strings individually using the claws of a claw hammer with to disastrous effects. Maybe we were just lucky. In any case we were successful in disassembling the piano and carrying the pieces up the stairs and out of the basement.
I've taken a couple apart. The Hammers come out as a unit fairly simply. The Harp on the other hand is a Bear. There are screws on the inside and the back side.
I ended up with a whole lot of nothing that I could use except the ebony and Ivory.
If you have someone who's into crafts the Hammer and the connecting pieces can be made into some nice designs
Many years ago I dismantled a piano. It had a base made of three layers of poplar and that was about four inches thick, laminated of many small strips. It was a lot of work to take apart and as I recall I got nothing useful out of it.
Piano wire is a high tensile strength wire. A piano provides many different diameters of wire. The real question is how much piano wire do you think you might use over the next few years?
..if nothing else, you can save some to make turning burners, and others if hardened (I'm assuming it's hardened like guitar strings) can be pinched on the tips to make very small drill bits.
Otherwise, you can throw them away quickly and you'll be guaranteed to find two things you could've used them for within a week
I once took an upright piano apart and used the veneered panels to make what looks like a chest of drawers but is actually a storage unit for record albums. Remember those? It has one large drawer on top and the lower part tips out on hinges and reveals storage for the albums. The veneer is beautiful, and it still sits in our living room. The piano was also painted and took lots of elbow grease to clean up.
I have only taken one apart back in the 70's before I started doing much woodworking. The panels where wormy chestnut and the 3x3 were spruce I wished I had saved them, that piano was from the about 1920.
I've taken several old pianos apart completely. There is little useful to a woodworker unless the case is some spectacular veneer and in good conditions. However, some old pianos were made from mahogany which might be worth saving.
The white piano keys for a long time have been made of some wood covered with plastic. Many decades ago the part you touch was covered with a very thin slice of ivory. You can usually tell because they will look yellow now since ivory yellows with age. The glue also tends to get brittle and the ivories fall off. They are of little value except to certain scrimshaw artists and to piano technicians who salvage spares to replace missing and broken ivories on heirloom pianos.
Most of the black keys are a small piece of black wood glued on top of the long wood key proper. Some are dyed hardwoods and some are black plastic. I understand it's rare to find true ebony. Even if they used ebony it might be dyed black since even ebony is often not jet black.
Most of the rest of the piano is not worth salvaging, IMO. I always saved the hardware (wood screws, brass and steel rods). I saved some of the non-wound mid and treble strings and some of the tuning pins. The rest I took apart with a sledge hammer and crow bar and took to the dump.
Be real careful when handling the cast iron frame (plate, harp) which is under a lot of pressure (tension) from the strings. I read there can be 16 tons of pressure in a typical piano. Mine is a concert grand which might have 30 tons of pressure. People have been injured. Best to release the tension on each string first with a tuning hammer (a tuning wrench). The cast iron may be worth a small amount for scrap depending on the weight (maybe $30-40?)
You might contact a local tuner/technician and ask if they want any of the pieces. If it's a player piano that still has the movement it might well be useful for parts to a player piano rebuilder.
If you know the make and can read the number inside the piano (often on a label) you can probably look it up on the internet and find the age. Long time ago I rebuilt the work parts of an old player piano - took me a month (it's still working), replaced the strings, hammers, bridal straps, felts, etc. Quite an exacting and tedious project. I looked it up and it was made in the '40s.
I would think only the panels would be worth the effort. All else would result in small pieces. I was able to procure the top of a junked baby grand. The legs and other thick pieces were all laminated and I couldn't think of an immediate use for them. The sound board was penetrated by fasteners and no way could I get a piece large enough for a guitar top.
I am in the processes of selling my home and so I took a hard look at all the wood I have and what I want to take with me. The piano top was too nice to discard but not big enough for a larger project. I decided to make shop cabinets to organize all the hardware I have. I procured divided compartment plastic boxes and designed the cabinets around them.
The panels were walnut veneered lumber core plywood. The veneers were a solid 1/16" thick. The core turned out to be perfectly quartered chestnut as verified by Hoadley's book.
The 1/4" dadoes were made with my dado plane and rabbets were cut a filletster plane.
One problem is a lot of less expensive pianos are made with "common" wood covered with veneer, and the older the piano the more damaged the veneer seems to be!
I never thought about trying to salvage the sound board. From what I've seen, they are made from a bunch of narrow pieces of spruce edge-glued together, maybe 3/8" or so thick. Smaller pieces might be nice for small boxes, music boxes, or pieces of boxes. Or the front of some other instrument such as a bowed psaltery.
(For anyone interested in making a psaltery there is an excellent book available with complete details in easy-to-follow form: "The Psimple Psaltery" by Eric Meier.
Even a relative beginner should have no big problem building one with this book. I've had one for years I use with the kids, but building one is on by bucket list.
I THINK this is the same Eric Meier who runs the amazing Wood Database, my go-to resource for wood species info and ID.
Paul, You have been a great help. Your breakfront case of plastic boxes is an inspiration. I have similar parts boxes in piles all over my bench and the rest of the shop, and they need some discipline. I'll get right to work on building them some cases as soon as I get home on Monday. A small, unimportant question: Are your three cases joined to each other or separate? It seems the whole thing might be difficult to move if joined and loaded with parts.
A few friends, who have been assigned the task of disposing of the piano, have extracted the keys for me. I'll find out, when I get home, whether there is any ebony or even ivory, in them. They knew how to get at them, which I didn't. Based on y'all's advise, I'm going to let the rest of it go to the great concert hall in the sky.
They are three separate boxes. I might eventually add some molding. They actually are nice enough to turn into spice boxes but that probably won't happen.
This is a comment for the general readership. I expect you already know this.
A problem with an unplanned carcass for a spice box is the security issues of the traditional form. One side board (the hinge side) is set back by the width of the door, so that the hinge hardware and the lock hardware are completely covered by the door and box. This keeps the kids and the hired help honest, since the spice box was designed and used to hold valuable items. Trying to retrofit many types of the traditional hidden compartments can also be a challenge.
>>>A few friends, who have been assigned the task of disposing of the piano, have extracted the keys for me. I'll find out, when I get home, whether there is any ebony or even ivory, in them. They knew how to get at them, which I didn't.
For next time: it's a bit different for different pianos. For an upright: Basically you remove the long board over the keys, often has the piano name decal in the middle.
Before you can get to that, lift the top lid (hinged) then remove the upper front board, the part the piano tuner takes off to reach the strings and tuning pins. It usually just lifts off. The fallboard, the part that covers the keyboard, is connected by a hinge to the board over the keys that needs to be removed. Inspect that to see if it lifts out, has screws inside or underneath, or has a catch held by a set screw or something.
Once that piece is removed (can't remember the name) then the keys will lift out easily. If not, remove one or two fasteners on either side of the action frame (the assembly with all the hammers and dampers) and lift it out.
A player piano with all the player action is more complicated. A grand piano is easiest - all the keys and the action are mounted on a big flat board that slides out the front after removing a couple of blocks held with screws from below.
It's fascinating how the keys are shaped. If you get them all in a box, try to fit them back together just to see. (Usually they are numbered.)
Be sure to take off the lower front board of an upright piano (the big board below the keyboard and above the pedals.) It usually has a spring catch at the top which lets it pivot forward and lift off. There is a big empty space behind that board - usually you find dust but sometimes people hide things there.
A piano tuner friend went to a house to evaluate an old piano a poor family wanted to sell, destitute after the father/husband died from black lung. He felt bad for them because the piano was basically worthless. However, he found a paper bag inside stuffed with $40,000 cash. The gentleman had hidden money he got for the black lung disease then died without telling anyone. That family was SO excited. (All piano tuners are good, honest people! )
