Piano Cabinet Repairs to a Difficult Corner

Here is another common piano cabinet repair that is difficult to conquer. Often times this repair is done several times over the life of the piano.

The repair I am referring to is the music desk on the small console upright piano built in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s with the stand alone music desk.

Usually this type of design has the small brass eyelets at each end and there is a small gauge wood screw that travels through the eyelet and locates into the side thickness of the music desk between the veneer layers.

What happens during hard use or neglect is that the music desk is over-extended to the front, or too many books are loaded onto the frame, causing the screw to break away the edge of the frame. As mentioned previously, this can be a problematic repair, as this is a design flaw, or weakness in the design.

Here is a photo set of the repairs done using the car body filler, colour, and finish.  Go forward slowly in this photo set as there are two videos that will take several seconds to load properly.

BondoFillerPrepColour

There are, of course, other music desk designs that give the same problems; one of the more common ones is the repair shown to the music desk of the Heintzman grand piano presently under reconstruction in the shop. 

Another problematic music desk that comes to mind is the music desk that is a small strip of wood attached to the fall board and flips up against the fall board when closing. Usually this type is also found on upright pianos.