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Hi!
I'm a guitarist. But i've always loved pianos. I play a little bit, not too much (mostly some blues i've got from the guitar), but i always wanted to have a piano. And since I've finally got my own place, I finally bought a piano. I've seen a few before I bought one, but i admit it was a totally emotional buy, and i should have been a lot more rational.
I like old pianos.. I know they are a pain.. and bring a lot more problems, but i finally got a 140 years old vertical french piano.
It was in bad shape, the owners use it just as a pretty furniture item, and painted it red, and caught my heart. I got it for a good price, and thought to my self "if I can't get it to play some day, it will still make a beautiful bar to keep my bottles.
I'm an artist and an extreme DYI guy. I've built from scratch most of my furniture, and totally renovated my house from pipes and electricity, to floors walls and furniture. I believe that with the right tools i can fix anything..so ye.. i bought a piano in bad shape, and believed i could fix it. :S

of course if I bought it emotionally, i didn't know all I need about pianos before the buy. I've read some "what to know when buying a piano" posts online, but certainly not enough because when i bought the piano I've forgot all that i've read :P

With the piano back at my place and after I've striped it open, I just found out its all wood... there is no iron frame :S Yap.. i didn't even know old pianos wore all wood..and because of that they are a pain to tune, and a lot prone to brake somewhere.

I've ordered some parts on-line, and started visually studying all the moving parts, on the keys and the action parts.
I've changed all the key tops. changed all the bridles. fixed 7 broken hammers, com broken screws, and cleaned it all up.
Everything is working and now its time for tuning. Since I haven't found any broken harp parts, I figured, if it is broken, I will only find out while trying to tune it.
I've seen some youtube videos on tuning a piano, and ordered a tuning hammer and some felt.
first problem.. the tuning) hammer has too loose on the tuning pegs.
i has able to adapt it to the odd tuning pegs on the piano (they seam a little smaller then the should), and got some tuning software and started the tuning process.
All the strings wore badly out of tune. when i mean badly, i mean BADLY..a lot of the strings wore really loose.
I went along with the videos.. i would felt up 2 of the strings, strike the key, an tune each string at a time.. with the software.. but it was getting a very long process.. and the guitarist in me end up just removing the action set for better access, got me a guitar pick, and tuned it like a guitar. I would tune the first string with the software, and the adjacent 2 strings to match it by ear (until they hummed together in harmony), and it worked out much faster and sounded great too.
Like I guitar that gets new strings, or has been with loose strings for a while, I expected the piano to need retuning several times before it holds in tune. every time i tense up a set of strings i expect the rest to get out of tune a little.

My question: how long should I expect until it stabilizes? It was the first day of tuning, i managed to tune all strings 3 times. the last one seams to be holding much longer. How much more days of this can I expect?
Any tougths on this craziness? :P

A cool fact: on the last piano key, on the side, when i remove it for capping it, it had some french text written by hand. Is this usual? does the piano maker leaves some text? It is very faded, i can't make it out, but it is a cool idea, that someone 140 years ago would left an hidden message on the side of a piano key

It most certainly has a cast iron frame. I can't imagine it withstanding any amount of tension without one.

My advice: stop now before you destroy it.

Here is what the hidden message says;

"de ne pas acheter ce cadres bois"

The modern tuning hammer will not fit over the oblong tuning pins very well. Yes tuning a piano would be like tuning several dozen guitars as the guitar has six strings and the piano has more than 200…..

You will be lucky to get the instrument close to concert pitch. Actually I would recommend not to take it up that high in tension.

This will also assist with the stability, by tuning it several tones flat of concert pitch. Maybe 415-425 or something….
Have fun and good luck.

Cool looking piano.

A piano without an iron frame is not ever going to really stabilize (at least not like one with an iron frame). But it'll give you lots of tuning practice.

how about posting some photos if the insides?

thats a beautiful looking piano! hope it starts to hold its tune!

Wow your venture sounds a lot like mine.

From building a brick wall to fixing plasma TVs.

So far I've picked up fourteen baby grands and it's been enjoyable working on them.

My advice to you is make sure the sound board has some life in it before spending any money on a piano that will never sound good.

Six of the pianos I've picked up had sound boards that I would describe as being dead.

I used those pianos for learning repair techniques of all kinds before I took the SAWSALL to them.

As all ways I like to thank the people who have helped me with my questions.

Have fun,

It sounds like you have the pitch at or near 440 already with no mishaps. I'm sure you will have had the bottom door off and you would have noticed any iron framework if there was any. Sometimes these uprites had partial iron frames but in 1870, who knows?. There were hundreds of independent piano makers around making pianos under railway arches.

It's not unusual for a maker to sign his or her work somewhere around the piano. Tuners sometimes note the date of a tuning on a key. When this piano was built, there were standards of pitch way above todays standard. If your piano hasn't broken, it will probably take 440, iron frame or not. There were lots of these pianos around when I was a kid. It's your piano. It stands you at very little outlay. It's yours to do with as you please.

It may not hold tuning well for a while. I used to say " all things being equal, everything will stay in tune eventually" and there is truth in that. A professional tuner could eventually get it stabilised if you could find somebody interested but it wouldn't be cost effective. Apart from that, why shouldn't you have all the fun.

The correct tuning tool would help. They are still sold. A few internal photographs would help us help you further.

There was a recent thread about a submerged piano that somebody had resurrected. There were elephants involved... Quite amusing. From time to time we get stories of people who have beaten the odds with a piano without our help.

My Steinway model O has an elegant legend rubber-stamped on the edge of the top key. The stamp identifies the people who re-bushed the keys in western Kentucky in 1997.

That key and all the others are currently in a shop northeast of Columbus, Ohio, getting re-bushed and re-covered. I'm in piano withdrawal so severe that I finally got my chromatic button accordion out of its gig bag and started recovering my French musette chops, such as they were when I inexplicably put the thing away over a year ago.

I imagine your old instrument has fewer than the now-standard 88 keys.

Have fun!

Hey Dan - Just wondering if you tried to resuscitate the "dead" soundboards before going at the ailing piano with a Sawsall? Oftentimes, making sure the ribs are firmly glued to the board, and shimming the cracks will bring back crown and make the soundboard vibrate like the head of a timpani drum. I rarely see it fail to work. Chuck Behm

thank you all for your input.
Here is some video of how it got to my house, I'll post some pics later: movie

I realize this can be offensive to piano pros "this guy doesn't know what he is doing and is killing a piano!", I'm kind of used to this type of response. Got the same on VW beetle forums when I restored an aircooled bug from scratch. Some guys preferred it to die on some junkyard, then to be restored not using original parts..
The idea is.. the piano was dead already. it would never be played again. I have no money to get it to a pro to do it, and.. i really like these kind of challenges, so do you prefer a dead piano that never would be played again, or a poorly restored one that gets played several times a week?

Anyhow it has been a wonderful experience, and besides the tune that i hope it will stabilize, i still need to deal with the outside ( i love the color, but it was a very poor paint job) so i will have to sandpaper it and repaint it.

I was researching the net for its origin, and I found out it was made at this maker:
Charles Monti
CH. MONTI
127 RUE OBERKAMPF
PARIS


I dont know the creation date exactly but this maker signed "CH. MONTI" from 1878 to 1894, when they changed to "MONTI et DELOYE"

Turns out this shop burned out in 1906 in a big fire, so it seams there wore not many made.

Some help on accurate dating is very much appreciated.

About the tuning Hammer, i got it to work with these tuning pegs by cutting it by 1.5 cm. As the inside funnels in, this way it was able to grip the smaller tuning pegs.

I found covered some holes on the top front cover of the piano that suggests it had a pair of candle holders, I'm thinking of adapting some wall candle holders, any suggestions?

Now some pics of the BEFORE, (some DURING too):

Interesting, can you please update this periodically as you work through this project?

It really doesn't have a plate does it? Even down below the keyboard?

I can't really seam to find a plate. the only chance is if it is embedded in the wood, of behind it.. I can't really tell.
I'm almost done with it. I wanted it to be playable and looking good on the outside. I had to change 8 hammer shafts (last owner tried to glue some broken hammer shafts with tape..) it was a "surprise" with each Hammer I took out to change the bridle..and found out some tape holding it :S Changed all the 88 bridles, and all the white key tops.
Now I'm just into tuning, and I need to sand it all on the outside and repaint it.
I'm getting a little faster at tuning, but sure thing, when i end tuning the last cord, i know many strings have already stretched and lost a bit of tuning :S
As a guitar, while tuning, i first turn it above the freq i want, stretching the string, and then tune it down until it reaches the desired frequency. I'm making up as I go along, based on my guitarist knowledge, so I'm probably not doing it the right way.
I'm leaving tuning on 5 cents higher, because i know it will still stretch down a bit.
When you tune a hole piano, do you do it once, or several times? do you start at one end and get to the other? I find myself tuning the middle strings more often (probably because they ware the ones i use more often)..
After you tuned a piano, how many cents down a string until you consider it out of tune again?
I've broke some strings in the process. some wore too rusty and broke on the first turn of the tuning hammer.. I have some string kit from ebay, i'm trying to match the gauge. How do you prepare a string before tuning it? do you stretch it a bit first?

Thank you in advance
I'll keep posting pics

I'm not sure about your credentials as a guitarist but you should always tune up to a note on a guitar, not down to a note. This for nut friction reasons as well as machine head gear slop reasons. Your tuning will not be as stable as somebody tuning up to a note. I can go into a more thorough explanation of how this works if you like.

High quality guitars are more tolerant to poor technique because they have less gear slop and low friction nuts. It's still not as secure though.

(I'm a working guitar technician and masters level guitar graduate, so I'm not sprouting this out of thin air)

There is no metal plate to find. This is one reason why the instrument will run out of tune fairly quickly as it will be more prone to environmental changes tugging the frame around.



It looks like the top plank structure is lag bolted through at least in the treble sections. If there are no lag bolts through in the bass section, previous to re-painting the cabinet, I would pop the top bi-folding board off to see if you have any separations underneath

Curious if anyone thinks that is the original action???

I believe it is the original. Looks it from here anyways...

ok my bad, i didn't explained it right. when getting new strings on a guitar, its best to stretch them a bit so they can hold tuning quicker. you can pull "
(moderate gentle) and tune turn pegs up to 1 tone up and then tuning it down to tone. this way you stretch the string and will get to normal tuning faster. Also, when trying this with the piano strings, I find you get much more precision unwinding the peg to tune, then winding it up to tune. Again, i've never tunes a piano before.. but since the strings wore very loose, the idea was to stretch them a bit. i can (most probably) be doing it wrong. That is why i'm here : to learn to do it not so badly

again: After you tuned a piano, how many cents down a string until you consider it out of tune again?
I've broke some strings in the process. some wore too rusty and broke on the first turn of the tuning hammer.. I have some string kit from ebay, i'm trying to match the gauge. How do you prepare a string before tuning it? do you stretch it a bit first?



That seams like a wise advice, thank you i'll will do so.

New pic. New white key tops, new bridles, 7 or 8 new hammer shafts. I know the action still looks old. But the action is now fully working on all keys. The idea is to get it working and looking good on the outside.
Any advice? thank you

Ok, fair enough - new guitar strings are a totally different situation.

But I think you have to be very careful over-tightening the strings on your piano. They are very old strings and could break very easily. Also, you don't want to put extra strain on the frame of such an old piano - which probably only has a partial iron frame. I think you have to be very patient with this particular piano and keep tuning up to pitch very gradually and in stages. You don't have to make it to 440 all in one go. Maybe tune it up a tone flat for starters, but see if you can get it in tune with itself. Then after a week or two, try and raise it by a semi-tone. The benefit of going slowly is you are protecting the strings and the piano from sudden stress, and you can actually play it while it is settling in.

That seams like good advice but its probably too late :S I've been tuning it to 440 (5 cents over) for 3 or 4 days now. I then play a little on it, and the next day the strings dropped out of tune (under a semi-tone) and I re-tune them all over again. Every day they seam to go less and less out of tune, i hope it will stabilize some day soon
I've tried a couple of softwares and they all struggle with the very low strings and the very high too. but it's worst on the low ones. Not really a big deal, I just tune them by ear referring to a tuned string of of the same note.