When a piano dies...horribly.

How often does a deaf/hh guy get a chance to completely dismantle an old, crappy piano and see up close how those innards worked, right down to the bare Alcoa aluminum piano frame? With lots of patience, little muscle work, hammer, locking plier, and screw driver did I manage to break down my crappy piano piece by piece. This was a piano I bought dirt cheap about three years ago. It barely worked with several keys that had the habit of sticking. It finally met it's demise at the hands of one very annoyed deaf/hh pianist. Me. I had it with that piece of crap I bought for $50 and worked out my frustration on my piano since it didn't cooperate very well with me whenever I played on it. Although it helped me get started again playing the piano after all those years of not playing very often. It was almost two years ago that I decided to get back into playing the piano (see my YouTube site of me playing the piano). But below are some pictures of the dismantling process. Thought you might find it cool to see the gory process.



The spinet piano was made probably either late 1940s or early 1950s though I couldn't tell the make but the aluminum piano plate was made by Alcoa in a signed agreement with Winter and Company to be made for their pianos. Since my old crappy piano was destined for destruction ever since I got my new piano I wanted to tear it down and salvage some good wood and get that 48 lb aluminum piano plate inside. This dismantling and destruction took several hours as I removed the pins, piano wires, wood, screws and what not. My hands were a little sore the next day but it wasn't enough to stop me from practicing on my piano.






Nearly done with the pins and piano strings. Used vice grip, wrench, hammer, and screw drivers.


All the pins and strings removed.


All done with the plate. Saved a few good scrap wood with one being a 3/4" inch plank seen directly behind the plate against the garage wall.


Off to the dump!


Mangled hammers meet their demise.


All cleaned up except for the non-aluminum metal pins embedded that the piano wires were strung around. Tried to remove a few and were successful but most broke off leaving the rest of the pins inside the plate. Decided to leave them as they are and see what the scrap yard guy says.


Aluminum piano plate die casted by Alcoa seen stamped on the plate. If it's Alcoa, it's all aluminum.


A 1946 silver dime found beneath the piano keys during the initial dismantling. Wondered how it could've gotten there. A silver U.S. dime for that period of time weighs .0724 of an ounce. Price of silver? $11.50 an ounce. Dime value? .85 cents.

The next step was to take my aluminum piano plate to a nearby scrap yard that buys aluminum scraps and soda cans. The scrap yard is located about 5 miles from my house where I used to live in New Mexico. The recycling and scrap yard was buying aluminum at .25 cents a pound at the time. My aluminum frame weighed 48 lbs. So, I got $12.00 out of it for several hours worth of work. At least I did something useful in the recycling business.