JoshPrime Makes Stuff

Hey Reader The time has finally come to move the piano into it's home in my living room. It isn't quite done, there is still some fabricating to do, but that can all be done and applied to the piano later, and I am interested in parking my car in my garage again. Let's get in to what I did! This is where we last left the piano. The casters are in place, the piano is painted and it was time to move on to the next steps. Then a truck arrived with my childhood bedroom on it. My folks decided that I could store my own crap, and so I got 44 boxes of toys, clothes, textbooks, and other fun memories that distracted me from piano construction for a while. The next step was antiquing. I never really thought of antiquing as being challenging, but I was having a bit of a hard time. Essentially, you water down brown (or any color you want, I suppose) paint. Then you rub it into the furniture, and immediately wipe it off. In theory, it will stick to the deepest crevices and give...

Hey Reader! When I was getting the piano to me, there was an incident in which one of the four casters snapped. I figured this was a good opportunity to update the casters, and replace them with rubber ones that wouldn't ruin my floor. I went out to my local home improvement store with the broken caster in hand and found myself faced with a lot of math questions. Casters are weight tested and you need to make sure that you have casters that can accommodate the weight of the thing you are attaching them to. The casters in sizes similar to the one I already had were rated to about 90 pounds. I was faced with some questions that seem silly now. Question 1: Is that 90 pounds per caster for a total of 360 pounds (90 times 4). I quickly answered that one with, yes - obviously. Question 2: How much does my piano weigh? Average piano weight is 400-500 pounds, and the harp is 150-200. Since my harp is gone, I could expect the piano to be about 200-350 pounds. To be safe, I decided to ...

Ok Reader, I know I said I would talk about the big hole in my piano. It all started because of this fret bar. I don't even know if that is the real name of it - not that it matters since I am ripping it out. It sticks out too far and would interfere with the shelving I am trying to build. I do think it is beautiful in it's own way and I wish I could figure a way to incorporate it, but maybe on my next piano conversion! There are a few youtube videos that show this being glued in place and coming off easily. I      did not have that experience. Turns out, that mine is screwed into the back of the piano and not all the screws are in a position to be removed without completely disassembling other parts of the piano that I am not trying to deal with. I got a tube of fresh bladed for my rotary tool and set out to get the thing out. I started with a Spackle trowel because it was wide, but eventually needed to use screwdrivers to get it loose. It was really in there! Di...

Hey Reader! I am not quite sure how to break up this piano project because I am feeling a little scattered. Anything is going to be more interesting than 11 months of wall smoothing so I guess I can do whatever I want. I want to paint the piano to match the bench, so the first step is to sand it. Honestly, the electric sander made this an incredibly easy job. I am using a paint primer combo and doing 2 coats of the dark color and 2 coats of the light color. With all that new paint, sanding feels like an extra step - but it will make the paint adhere much better. Getting into some of the carvings is a challenge and I sanded by hand in those areas. The electric sander definitely did a better job, but the smooth areas are also the areas that are going to be treated roughest so I guess it is better to have them done right. It took me a few days to get the dark color on right. The picture below isn't quite the best way to protray how this went down. The top, the decorative bit...

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...

Hey Reader, I am so excited to get started on the piano bar. I found a few more pictures of finished products and I am itching to get customizing. The problem will be having the right tools. I don't have a great deal of tools yet. Building my garage work area is going to be a whole other project some time in the future, so for now I am stuck looking at pretty things online. There are worse things. When you last saw the piano bench painted a dark gray color. I promised a complicated painting technique and I am about to deliver on that promise. I went over the bench with a much lighter gray color. It is pretty hard to tell in these pictures how much lighter it is. This is especially silly given that I have been working on this project outside. Since most of my crafting takes place after a long day of crime fighting, I find myself on my front porch in the dark. The idea is that I paint it a light color, and then sand the surface to reveal bits of the darker color underneath. Thi...

Hey Reader, We last talked about the piano bar back in May ! If you don't recall, I found myself a piano on Craig's list and the very nice person listing it took the harp out for me. It is now a piano skin. Calling it a piano skin is kind of horrifying, so I have vowed to keep doing it. I have been so busy with wall stuff that I really haven't touched the piano skin and have had to park around it in my garage for some time now. The walls are now done and there are even blinds in a select number of rooms. This has freed me up to get my garage a little less full of piano carcass. It is really beautiful, but it is also pretty beat up. Last week, I talked about the feeling of anxiety about starting a project, and this piano has become another one of those projects. In an attempt to ease into it, I decided to tackle the bench first. I wasn't sure I even wanted the bench when I found the piano, but now I have the chance to test out some techniques on a less intimidating...

Hey Reader! As I continue to work on smoothing walls downstairs, my mind wanders to other ways I can spend my time making and doing cool stuff. This idea actually started from not finding exactly what I wanted at a store. You know what they say: "Why pay $2 for something when you can spent $97 and make it yourself." Essentially, I want to get a bar cart for my house. I wouldn't characterize myself as a bar-hopper, but the idea of having one for guests is cool. All the bar carts I found were nice, but seemed awkwardly sized. Most were essentially short tables you are supposed to stack alcohol on. I don't have time to bend over and pick up bottles when I want to entertain guests. What do you take me for, furniture store? Really though, next time you are at a furniture store check out how low bar carts are. I feel like they want children to drink more than adults. Irresponsible. I did find one that was more of a cabinet, but then I wished it was just a little bigge...