The Craftiest Workshop

My brother in-law and his wife wanted to get rid of their upright piano. It was old and out of tune and they had moved on to using a digital piano.

My husband went over to their house with his tools and they managed to break it down into manageable pieces. I sent my husband a text to take photos along the way but he didn’t see the text until after they had it all apart. We took some of the smaller pieces to our place with plans to use the parts in future projects. The larger metal pieces stayed on their front porch with plans to take it to metal recycling for some cash.

Last weekend they decided to remove the strings and discovered that the metal was not brass as they had thought but just steel. Steel is not worth the trip to metal recycling; especially with gas prices these days. We took those metal pieces to our place as well and they may end up as a garden feature.

My first real project with the piano parts was this key holder.

Each piano key is attached to a long piece of wood that was attached to a wire. You can see in the picture that each black and white key is numbered on the wood. Not sure why a piano starts on the A note. I wanted a full set of notes from C-B so I started with the 4th key.

The next step was removing all the screws and snipping off the wood above the black and white keys with the band saw.

I glued together all the keys, clamped them and let them dry for a few hours. I used yellow wood glue as the glued surfaces were wood but I had to do some cleaning of the excess glue as it dries yellowy especially against the white keys. Next time I would just use Weldbond as it is white to start and dries clear.

I decided to take the easy route with this first one because I wanted to just use parts of the piano. I had my husband cut the center of the keyboard lid that had YAMAHA on the underside for the backing and shelf; he is better with accuracy on the chop saw than I am.

The black keys did not stay glued as they were only touching at the base of where they met the white keys. The keys needed to be cut down more in order to see YAMAHA and allow room for the wire screws so I removed the black keys and taped them all together with painters tape to cut the same size. A china marker (grease pencil) worked great to mark a cut line on the keys as it is easily rubbed off after.

I used the drill press to drill three holes in the backing. The screws that had the piano wire had to be hand screwed in and tightened as they have a smooth head and no notch for a drill bit or screw driver.

The last step after cutting the keys shorter was to glue all the keys down with Weldbond and in a few hours it was all set.

This project will be great hung up and used as a key holder.
The small shelf on top perfect for placing sunglasses or a wallet.

This one will go to my brother in-laws house as it was their piano and there is even some of their children’s scribbles on the wood.

If my math is correct, I could make six more of these with the remaining keys.
I do have a few other ideas in mind for the keys, so you will have to wait and see what I come up with next.