Kranich & Bach 6'1" Parlor Grand #34410

With beautiful ornate rosewood cabinet. A "family heirloom," played by the owner's grandmother when a child at the turn of the century. Built in 1899. Restored by Ray's Piano Service, March-April 2005.

This was a truly fine piano when new! Before restoration, it showed considerable wear in hammers and other action parts, badly corroded strings and pins, resulting in very poor tune. With restringing, repinning, and action reconditioning, this piano can be returned to its original playing condition. Our budget for this project is just under $6,000, including pick up and delivery.
IMPROVEMENTS INCLUDED:

Restring, repin—Dismantle. Remove strings, pins, plate. Repair and refinish sound board and bridges. Re-install plate. Install new strings and pins. Rebuild pedal mechanisms.

Recondition action—Clean and polish all parts to be reused, install new hammers, new hammer flanges (shaped to fit), knuckles, damper pads, wippens (shaped to fit), backchecks, damper lifter felt, rebush damper guide rails, replace additional defective parts, tighten all screws.

Complete Regulation—Install new underkey punchings. Make adjustments to ensure that piano plays like new: key height, key levelling, hammer blow distance, lost motion, letoff,  drop, backchecks, dampers.  Tune to A-440

Complete cleaning—Clean the plate rather than refinishing it, to retain its beautiful original artwork. Also, we clean and polish the cabinet but leave the original finish which remains beautiful after more than a century of loving care.

SCHEDULE:

Sign Service Agreement , picked up piano: February 26, 2005

Restoration Work: March-April 2005.

Deliver owner on Camano Island, WA: May 7, 2005.

1899  Kranich & Bach Grand -- "Before" picture:

1899 Kranich & Bach Grand
Additional "Before" Pictures
taken in our shop:

1 – Close-up of ivory keytops and fallboard decal. Keytops and finish are in excellent condition. We'll clean the piano exterior and keytops and replace  action parts that are defective or badly worn.

2 – Close-up of right leg, showing its elaborate design. The makers took great care with wood carving on the legs and the music rest. The piano has been lifted off the shop floor on our "grand transporter" for easy moving during restoration.

3 – The top view of the wide section of the plate. To preserve the original artwork we will clean the plate rather than refinish it.

4 – The strings and pins are badly corroded and have lost their brilliance of tone. These will be replaced. We will also replace the pinblock if necessary.

1899 Kranich & Bach Grand
Pictures of the Restoration Process
taken in our shop:

1 – We removed the piano action, the dampers, and the sustain and sostenuto mechanisms, for storage during restringing. These components will be reconditioned when parts arrive.

2 – We removed the bass strings and sent them to the string maker for duplication. We then removed the tuning pins.

3 – After removing all plate bolts and the "stretcher" board at the front of the piano, we lifted the plate out of the piano using our ceiling-mounted winch. This will give access to the sound board and bridges for repairs and refinishing. We found the pinblock to be in good shape, so we will not replace it; instead we'll order new wippens.

4 – We cleaned all dust and dirt off the soundboard and bridges. Interestingly, the soundboard has no cracks, so no major board repairs are needed. We scraped the old finish off the board and bridges, then sanded the surfaces thoroughly and applied sealer and spar urethane.

5 – We cleaned the plate warm water and detergent, and we removed the original understring felts.

6 – We polished the plate with a commercial cleaner to preserve the color.

7 – The designs on the plate were well worth preserving.

8 – After we lifted the plate and pinblock back into the piano, we installed the plate bolts and new understring felt. Then we installed new strings and pins, using a stringing guide prepared before destringing.

9 – "Before" picture of damper guide rails--several bushings have disappeared and all are badly worn, so we decided to rebush all holes.

10 – "After" picture of damper guide rails, treble and bass. All holes have been rebushed, and we installed new felt for seating the installation onto the soundboard.

11 – We installed the damper guide rails, the bass strings, and stringing braid.

12 – "Before" picture of the action components--hammers, wippens, keyframe, keys, and regulating rail. We found the wippens to be so badly worn that they should be replaced with new wippens. The only correctly sized wippen available (i.e. having the same distance from flange center to jack center) is a "Kawai-style" wippen that requires some reshaping to fit. Similarly, we will need to reshape the new hammer flanges to fit on the rail of this piano.

13 – We cleaned the grime off the old keys and sanded the wood surfaces of the old keys. Then we cleaned and polished the ivory keytops.

14 – We replaced the original back checks and damper lifter felts on the backs of the keys with new ones.

15 – After sanding the wood surfaces of the keyframe and cleaning and polishing the key pins, we "bedded" the keyframe into the keybed of the piano by sanding the areas that we separated. This is a delicate task with this non-conventional design of keyframe, because the balancing rail as well as the front and back rails must all rest flat on the keybed for minimum knocking noise as the piano is played.

16 – We installed new nameboard felt on the edge of the fallbaord which will be above the keys.

17 – With the keyframe, the end blocks, the keyslip and the fallboard in place, we set the height of a few low bass keys at the balancing rail and at the keyslip. We repeated this process at the top treble, and then we regulated keyheight and levelling for the entire keyboard, with the action on our workbench.

18 – The sostenuto mechanism of this piano is of non-conventional design, consisting of a number of plastic tabs that hold up the dampers by means of small brass clips installed on the damper levers. We dismantled this mechanism, cleaned all surfaces, and replaced all worn felts.

19 – The damper mechanisms are ready for re-installation.

20 – The damper mechanisms have been re-installed in the keybed.

21 – We removed all damper felts, cleaned the damper blocks and wires with steel wool, and sprayed the wires with silicone.

22 – We dismantled the lyre; then removed, cleaned, and polished the brass parts; replaced felts; and reassembled the lyre and re-installed it in the piano.

23 – We installed new felt on the dampers, then regulated each wire of the bass dampers in order to seat them properly on the strings. Then we installed refelted dampers at the end of each section. Before installing the rest of the dampers, we will install the hammers and align them to the strings. This is important, because the strings cannot be moved, being inserted in holes in the plate.

24 – The parts suppliers were unable to provide new hammer shanks and flanges that fit this non-conventional piano. We selected shanks that would fit perfectly if we cut about 1/4" off the tip of each flange.

25 – We attached a jig to our band saw and cut all the new  flanges.

26 – We used cold hide glue and our "home-made" glue applicator for installing hammer heads.

27 – We replaced original wippen #88 with a new sample Kawai-type wippen obtained from our supplier. We were able to make this wippen fit this non-conventional action by cutting the accelerator spring off the flange. Then we installed new hammer shank and hammer head #88, aligned the hammer to strings for note #88 in the piano and adjusted the strike point for optimum tone.

28 – Our new hammers were "Abel Lite" hammer heads pre-bored to samples by the supplier. To save us time, the supplier also tapered the hammers, squared them to the back checks, and roughed them for effective checking.

29 – We installed the hammers by section, matching angles and striking points to the samples installed earlier as well as to a few original hammers that were correctly aligned to the strings.

30 – This hammer installation project was complicated by the fact that the shanks were positioned at varying angles on the rail. We positioned the new shanks to match the location of the original shanks, correcting locations after installing hammers at consistent angles.

31 – Because of the angled position of the shanks, we found that the hammers needed to installed at angles that compensated for upward swing, ensuring that they would strike the strings of each unison squarely.

32 – We installed the dampers one-at-a-time, beginning in the bass. For each installation, we regulated the damper wire, then glued the new felt pads on the blocks, then inserted the wire in place and tightened the screw. This was a tedious project, because previous wire-bending and oversized guide rail holes had left most dampers poorly misaligned to the strings.

33 – We installed "trichord" damper felts in the first six dampers of the tenor section to ensure efficient muting.

34 – Using the original wippens, which will be replaced with new wippens when the shipment arrives, we regulated hammer height, blow distance, and letoff--so the piano plays well enough for us to tune it.

35 – We tuned the piano several times over a two-week period. When the new wippens arrive, we will install them and conduct a complete regulation.

36 – We removed the original wippens.

37 – The "geometry" of the new wippens is correct, but there were two challenges: First, we needed to cut off the "accelerator spring" to enable the flange to be installed on the horizontal rail. Second, we needed to adjust the jack position before installing each wippen because this cannot be done afterwards.

38 – We installed the new wippens, aligning them to the knuckles. Those which needed further alignment to the capstans we angled at the flange with spacing paper. We also installed a layer of sandpaper on the rail to hold the flanges snugly.

39 – In order to correct the angle of the jacks, we raised the back rail, using wood spacers about one-eighth of an inch thick.

40 – We regulated the jacks before installing each wippen, finding that the varying angle of the wippens required different jack positions.

41 – An additional challenge was to find the right capstan position because this affects the touch weight. We will examine this issue after regulating.

42 – We discovered that the jacks didn't quite reach the regulating buttons, so we inserted shim under the regulating rail in order to correct this.

43 – By placing the regulating buttons on an angle down to the jacks, we solved an additional problem--this moved the regulating tips away from the hammer rail to make them easier to turn.

44 – As we installed wippens, we corrected the angle of the new backchecks and bent them into place a small distance away from the hammer tails to avoid hitting them on the upswing.

45 – This piano has a very "uncoventional" keyframe: large brackets support both the hammer rail and the wippen rail, making access to individual parts difficult.

46 – An additional problem with the keyframe was the lack of "crown" in its construction--in fact, there was slight "reverse crown" due to deterioration. To prevent knocking noises when playing, we installed thin felt spacers to support the front of the keyframe..

47 – We cut some wood out of the damper lever support rail to prevent knocking noises as it was lowered.

48 – We bent the sostenuto support wire to improve its functioning.

49 – We regulated hammer blow distance, letoff, drop, and catching. We repeated the regulating process with the action in the piano, and then we regulated key dip.

50 – We tuned the piano again, now that we a much improved action.

51 – We re-installed the key blocks, keyslip, and fallboard. Ready for Delivery!

52 – We don't often have an opportunity to work on a unique vintage instrument such as this Kranich & Bach grand. We are very pleased with the final outcome of the project--so are the owners!