Piano Bar pt. 4: Pin Block Drama!

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Hey Reader,

It is finally time to turn my attention to the piano itself. One of my favorite parts of taking on new projects is getting to learn just enough about them to be dangerous. For example, I am learning a lot about pianos and how they are built. For example, there are 10,000 moving parts on a typical piano. These are complex machines and are largely build by hand! I could totally talk about it with someone who builds pianos and now sound completely clueless. Don't ask me to build one though, that is a lot!

The first thing I had to learn about was the random block of wood that is filled with screws. A cursory googling revealed that this is called the pin block. The pin block has pins - fancy screws - in it that perfectly align with the metal harp. The strings are then attached to the wood at the top and bottom of the upright piano, across the harp and into these pins. There are 230 pins in the piano.

Many of the blogs I read about piano conversions talked about how challenging pulling the pins would be from the pin block. Considering there is 18 tons of pressure held by those pins, it makes sense that they would be pretty well attached. Each one is driven into the pin block more than an inch. I spent an hour with a wrench and managed to get four out. only 226 to go! Finally, I had to buy a special socket wrench to help.

Seeing the piano with a clean pin block is the most beautiful sight I have ever seen. I am loving this project so much. It is the perfect amount of stuff I know how to do and stuff that feels like a new adventure. While I am really excited to see the finished product, I am also nervous because I don't know that I am going to have a project that is this uniquely challenging again in a while. Fortunately, I have a lot left to do! Next up is paint - and just like with the bench, there will be a lot of it!

I hope you can find a project that gives you this kind of flow. I don't know that I even believe in flow, but here I am talking about it.

Keep making cool stuff and until next time,
JoshPrime 

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