On his website, Petrich suggests ways to turn old pianos into art or showpiece furniture. Petrich has accepted and stored so many cast-off pianos on his property over the years that he routinely takes some apart to use as firewood to heat his home. “I really want to write this book,” Petrich said in a telephone interview. Dean Petrich said he is now developing a guide to give do-it-yourself advice for reusing an obsolete piano. The Olympia buddies received tutelage on piano deconstruction from a veteran piano tuner and refurbisher on Whidbey Island, Washington. “I always thought it would be really interesting to make tables for piano bars out of pianos,” Rohde mused. The cast iron harps at the center of piano bodies (curvaceous X-shaped plates usually weighing 150 pounds and up) can be reused in furniture. Tuning pins can be used for art, for example, if laid out in patterns, he said. Small parts, like dampers, can be used by crafters to make little figures. “It can also be used to make really nice birdhouses,” Rohde said. Other upcycled end products in the early going are pretty wood boxes to hold things like jewelry.
Rohde said posts and dowels pulled out of a piano can be used by woodturners. Musical instrument makers and repairers - think guitars and dulcimers - seem like promising marketing targets. The as-yet-unnamed group plans to advertise the salvaged wood boards and veneers and other parts for sale online in various specialty forums. “We just hope to break even,” Rohde said. Wood boxes crafted from scraps salvaged from an old piano. The trick will be to turn this calling into a sustainable enterprise. Rohde said each part of a piano potentially has a niche market for re-use - with the old-growth maple, spruce, oak, mahogany and rosewood being perhaps the most valuable.
“Some of the maple that we get is really highly figured stuff that would cost you a fortune now.” “I am interested in the soundboards in particular,” Rohde said. “Some of the metals are really, really interesting. “Some of the woods are incredible,” Rohde said. He said the goal is to repurpose virtually all of it. Rohde said the Schut family’s old piano is the sixth one his group has torn apart. “I felt like I was saying goodbye to a family member,” Schut said about the emotional moment. She said she made her son play it one more time a few days ago before the recyclers hauled it away to their workshop. Her three kids learned to play piano on the old instrument. “I absolutely did not want it to go to the landfill,” Schut said. She said it made no sense to her to haul the beast across the state.
#Piano tuner anchorage for free
Michelle Schut, a mom of three from Olympia, gave this piano away for free ahead of a planned move to Spokane.
The workshop briefly echoed with popping sounds like rapid-fire gunshots when Rohde cut through a row of tensioned steel piano strings with a side grinder. “Aha!” shouted one of the makers as he discovered a coin underneath the piano keys while his comrades deciphered a crumpled receipt apparently lost inside the piano since 1951. They used as their workshop the local “makerspace” in downtown Olympia where they are all members. On the Tuesday before Christmas, the semi-retired, self-described tinkerer and woodworker set about with his three collaborators, all in their 60s and 70s, to disassemble a 120-year-old Smith & Barnes upright piano. “There are all sorts of keyboards that are much cheaper and more appropriate for the type of music that kids are probably interested in anyway.” “It’s just fallen out of fashion to have your kids learn that particular instrument,” observed Michael Rohde, the group’s leader. Michael Rohde disassembling a 120-year-old piano to salvage the metal and fine wood for other uses.
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