# Instruments and Equipment > Builders and Repair >  Old piano wood

## Murphys Bread & Beer

Just curious if anyone here has dismantled an old piano to salvage the wood. I've seen some nice old uprights go at auction around here for under $10. How thick are the soundboards on a piano? If I had a nickel for each time I've help move a piano............

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## sunburst

I've got some piano scraps that I keep around to make patches in repair work. Also, piano braces can be a source for brace stock. Piano sound board wood is seldom particularly good for instrument tops because many makers of pianos accepted considerable amounts of grain run out in their spruce, and often the pieces making up the sound board are cosmetically "off" because they were made up or relatively narrow pieces. All that doesn't take into account working around the holes in the spruce. In short, if you have the wood and it will work out for instrument work, fine, but tracking down jink pianos for their wood is not likely to lead to good sources of high quality woods.
Some pianos have pretty good hardwood in the case, but often they are veneer over mediocre wood.

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## JeffD

I have friends who have done that more than a few times. 


As you probably know, $10.00 for an old piano is kind of high. When perfectly serviceable pianos that sound great and play great are available in the paper "free to a good home" almost twice a month. Among my musical friends I know many who have a piano, and few who paid anything for it. They paid to move it and tune it and move it again perhaps, and tune it again, and get some minor repairs, or to refinish it, but mostly to move it.

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## Ed Goist

According to this article the standard thickness of a piano soundboard is 5/8" (16 mm).

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## sunburst

I've never seen any 5/8" thick piano soundboards, more like 1/4".

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## Ed Goist

> I've never seen any 5/8" thick piano soundboards, more like 1/4".


Steinway's website confirms John's observations regarding piano soundboard thickness:
_"The Steinway Diaphragmatic Soundboard is 8-9 mm (~ 11/32") in the center tapering to 5-6 mm (~ 7/32") at the edges." (the parenthetical conversions to inches are mine)_

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## Spruce

The wood from salvaged pianos that looks interesting to me is the Brazilian Rosewood ply...
I have some large sheets from an old Steinway box piano here somewhere...

I _think_ you might be able to resaw this material into sets for Selmer/Maccaferri copies, which were originally made from ply...
I was thinking that you might be able to keep the original finish too, and make a pretty convincing antiqued Selmer copy...

Am I crazy??   :Wink:

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## sunburst

> Am I crazy??


Well yeah... but what's that got to do with it? (That's what I like about you!  :Wink:  )

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## Grommet

Mine was 3/8"" thick with a few cracks and a fair number screw holes, but otherwise nice 80= yr old spruce. I gave most of that  to a dulcimer maker. Still have the large vertical maple posts that supported the harp frame, and the thick mahogany sides. Wish I had kept the braces and a few other bits. So far I've only used some of the smaller maple scraps for bridges.

Scott

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## ProfChris

My piano tuner gave me a piece of a 1920s grand piano soundboard which I used to make this uke:



The soundboard was around 8mm or 3/8 inch thick, very close-grained spruce with almost no runout. The boards from which it was made were about 65mm or 2 1/2 inches wide.

I believe this was a high-class piano (one step down from a Steinway), so cheaper uprights might use less good wood.

I resawed the board into two pieces, using the front/top for this uke. I planed the bracing off the back, which then took up a huge curve. But over 3 months or so it flattened out, and that part is now with a Swedish uke maker to see what he will make of it.

I wouldn't buy a piano, unless it had a solid mahogany carcass, because disposing of the iron frame would be a pain. But a piano restorer would probably swap you a soundboard's worth of wood for a bottle of wine.

PS, the finish on this one is Tru-oil, which soaked in to the wood a little unevenly. Were I doing it again I'd use shellac.

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## SGraham

I tore apart an old upright and didn't find the soundboard to be very useable. There are lots of big spruce braces, though, that run across the soundboard that can be cut apart for brace wood. In the back of the piano were some +/- three-inch-square braces made of solid curly maple. These were big, hard, heavy braces. I think there were five of these and they ran up the entire back of the instrument. There's some really good neck wood.

The best thing, though, is to lay the harp on the ground and snip the bass strings while they are still at tension. Those things give a downright cathartic POW and fly across the street.

And I almost forgot, lean the harp against the side of the garage and give the neighborhood kids some tennis balls. The neighbors will all come out and listen appreciatively to the soothing WHANGS and SPROINGS.

I say go for it.

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## Rob Grant

Years ago I salvaged an old upright piano for the ebony of the black keys and hopefully the ivory of the white keys. As it turned out, the white keys were an early celluloid of some sort, but the black keys were good ebony (bridges and nuts). I couldn't bear to throw the rest away, so I removed the iron frame, strings and soundboard and mounted it all in a 4X2 frame on the front wall of our house as a sort of "doorbell."

It's still there today and it still provides a rather novel way to announce guests. I measured the boards (photo below). The numerous main soundboards are ~8mm with some of the boards near the tuning bar going as thick as ~20mm.

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## Frank Ford

A few years ago I was given a full set of keys (sans ivory) from an old Bosendofer.  I started a project - now on the back burner - to make some banjo bridges using the salvaged maple and ebony. . .

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## Big Joe

I've seen a few older, but really nice pianos that the cases were solid Mohogany or Brazilian Rosewood.  They are not thick enough for mandolins, but might be good for a guitar or other flat top instrument.  We have used pieces of the spruce for pathces or braces or whatever we needed a chunk of wood to do.  Most pianos are a laminate and the case is pretty useless.  The soundboards are not a great source of wood very often.  However, if you want to tear one apart to see what you can do, go for it.  You may have some real fun... and some really hard work ahead!

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## oldwave maker

Recycled a piano that came to NM in 1909, used the soundboard for an ok 000 size guitar and a great flattop octave, the beech 4x4 uprights made worthless neck material, shoulda kept the harp for a windchime,  the best part (as Big Joe says- some real fun) was the silencer button I salvaged to put on my child brides mastertone banjo!

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## John Arnold

I have salvaged several pianos, using the soundboard braces for bracewood. The soundboards on the ones I have dismantled were 0.32" to about 0.35" thick, and made of pieces 2 1/2" to 4" wide. I also have saved some of the BR or mahogany veneered casework, and a couple of months ago, I resawed some veneered panels from a BR square piano for a fellow luthier. After doing the resawing, I had renewed interest in making a guitar from some of it. 
I have also used the support posts on the back side, for necks and other odds and ends. The support posts can be almost anything...from Doug fir to spruce to maple.....or even elm.
By far, the best use I have made of piano wood has been the maple pin planks, which are invariably rock maple. It is the best maple I have used for guitar bridgeplates....equal or even better than Timeless Timber. And I heard that Snuffy Smith likes it for banjo bridges.

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## Charles E.

We have salvaged a couple of piano's. The braces we use for base bars and sound posts for violins (shhh... it's a secret!) 
We also have procured some nice ebony and Ivory from the keys. The sound boards were not very useable.

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## Murphys Bread & Beer

It sounds like there are several uses for the old piano. I have an old baby grand piano that I'm going to gut and put an electronic keyboard in. I hate to throw stuff away if I think there can be a use for it. What is work to some is enjoyment to others, I guess it's all in how you look at it. Thank you for the input.

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## Spruce

> It sounds like there are several uses for the old piano.


I use an old small piano carcass for a reverb chamber...
Blast the amp into the carcass, and close-mic it...
You can hear this all over the electric mandolin tracks on "Overhead at Darrington" below...

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## Gregory Tidwell

> Years ago I salvaged an old upright piano for the ebony of the black keys and hopefully the ivory of the white keys. As it turned out, the white keys were an early celluloid of some sort, but the black keys were good ebony (bridges and nuts). I couldn't bear to throw the rest away, so I removed the iron frame, strings and soundboard and mounted it all in a 4X2 frame on the front wall of our house as a sort of "doorbell."
> 
> It's still there today and it still provides a rather novel way to announce guests. I measured the boards (photo below). The numerous main soundboards are ~8mm with some of the boards near the tuning bar going as thick as ~20mm.



Got any pics of your "doorbell?"

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## Rob Grant

Greg T wrote:
"Got any pics of your "doorbell?" 

See photos attached to my original message (above). That be the "beast" itself attached to the front outside wall of me dwelling.

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## Lee

If you're disassembling an old piano with real ivory keytops, please provide the old keys to a piano repair shop. Don't bother removing the keytops, just send the whole keys.  Try calling a local member of the Piano Technician's Guild probably found in your yellow pages. I'm a member, but I tune more than repair.  Elephants don't appreciate their own tusks being used for anything.

Blackstone Valley Piano does restoration in Uxbridge, MA.

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## AMKing

*Just make sure your careful with the piano wires.*  I know how everyone says that but my brother was hurt when he was disassembling a piano.  There was a wire that snapped and shot out into his calf.  It was a medium gauge wire about 5 in. long.  It stuck in his leg about 1/2 way.

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## Lee

The total tension of all the piano strings measured together is somewhere in the 20-30 ton range.  It's dangerous.  When removing the strings, do it gradually back and forth. It's possible to crack the cast iron frame. Wear safety glasses.

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## Murphys Bread & Beer

Thank you for the heads up. I haven't started taking this old piano apart yet, but I appreciate the warnings, I'll take it slow.

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## MI MusicMan

The last one I did, we got a whopping $18 at the scrapyard for the harp.  It looked better as a piece of art leaning against the front of the store than some of the modern art we have around town - several customers said so...  Get a heavy duty pair of leather gloves and break each treble and tenor string by over-tuning with a tuning hammer.  Then cut each bass string or unstring them.  Do this while the harp is still attached or it can be catastrophic.  Aside from the wood and parts value, it can be a heck of a lot of fun.  Remember that each treble string is two notes and needs only to broken on one end.  Cut the other one off after the tension is released.  A 1/4 size socket stuck backwards in a drill makes a quick and easy tuning pin remover.

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