A number of years ago I sold a new piano to a retirement home. I serviced the piano regularly for quite a while but then the administration changed and I didn’t service the piano for a while. Recently a couple in that town was interested in a piano for the farm and I sold them a used piano of a reputable maker. Being used to the sound and feel of a grand piano in the “town” house, this school model vertical did not satisfy them. I suggested they visit both a local church and the retirement home to inspect and become acquainted with pianos by this particular maker. They made the visits but reported back to me that the piano in the retirement home looked like it was a hundred years old. With this news, I made a visit to inspect. What had happened was the piano had become a plant stand and the finish had all but disappeared. Indeed, the piano was still a fine piano, but without the original finish, its appearance was sad. Pianos should not be used as plant stands!

Very recently, a pipe in the ceiling of a classroom at a school broke. It might have been connected to the HVAC system. As luck would have it, a fine piano was directly beneath the failure so the piano was drowned. The finish, as expected, did not survive the swim, but the lid of the piano did protect the action. If the action had gotten wet, most likely a totally new action would have been needed. In this case, the keys suffered the damage. Since pianos are still put together with water-soluble glue to facilitate easy replacement of parts that wear (felt bushings, primarily), all the glue dissolved and the keys became Tinker Toys. A keyboard is a panel of edge-glued pieces that is then sawed into the individual keys. The key buttons are glued to the tops, the shoes are glued to the bottoms, the black sharp caps are glued on, the white covering material is glued to the naturals, and the felt bushings are glued into the mortises. When a keyboard gets wet, all these glue joints fail. It is a major puzzle to get it all back together!

After getting the keyboard back together and replacing all the keyboard felt (back rail cloth, balance rail punchings, and front rail punchings), the keys must then be leveled in the piano and the proper amount of travel for each key set. It is exacting work, dealing with paper and card punchings of various thicknesses ranging from 0.060” to 0.002”.

The lesson to learn and share: Don’t let your piano get wet!