Soundboard Repairs
After 102 years of dutiful service, this soundboard could go no further, in any fashion, as part of a musical instrument without thorough restoration. Fluctuation in humidity, causing many cycles of expansion and contraction, had created many long and wide cracks in this soundboard. As well, original glue joints connecting the bridges and ribs to the soundboard had been severely compromised. The sound such a piano would produce is easily imagined; the string’s tonal vibrations are only mildly amplified, but, cause much rattling and buzzing of loose wood.
Seen from above, mini go-bars exert clamping pressure to reunite bridge and soundboard after extensive repairs. The light wood lines show where a repair has been made. A spruce shim is meticulously fit into each soundboard crack. When all cracks and loose ribs have been repaired the soundboard will return to its drum like state, moving and projecting sound as a single body.