[pianotech] twin legged grand

Bruce Dornfeld bdornfeld at earthlink.net
Wed Jun 3 20:16:39 MDT 2009


Hello Lee.  This sounds like a request I got not too long ago.  I wrote
about it for the Partial Post, Chapter newsletter of the North Shore
Chapter.  I don't recall if these had a rubber wheel, but it offers a lot of
protection because it distributes the weight to more wheels.

 

The Weird Stuff: The Six Legged Grand

Bruce Dornfeld, RPT

 

A church called with a simple common need.  The grand piano needs better
wheels to move it around safer and easier.  The normal grand piano truck
(Schaff # 4012) seems like the likely solution, but that was before seeing
the piano.  It is an old Chickering grand with double legs and feet.  The
grand truck is no longer a good idea because the weight could only be badly
distributed and the legs are too thin to make them take twice the load they
were designed for.  On other six legged grands, I have used the grand leg
dollies (Schaff # 4018).  While they are sold as a set of three, you will
need two sets for the six legged piano.  This also gives the piano eighteen
wheels to move on, which is a good thing!

 

If this piano was moved more than a few times a year, and the church wanted
to come up with more money, replacing the legs with conventional legs would
be a better long term solution.  Since the legs were still a bit wobbly
after the dollies were installed and legs were tighten as well as possible,
lyre braces were added.  They give the legs a stability they have not had in
many decades if ever.

 

These legs have a feature I had not encountered when installing dollies
before.  The original casters were enclosed in the ball shaped portion of
the bottom of the leg.  While the grand leg dollies fit just fine, there was
an unexpected result.  The piano was now about three inches higher.  The
bench was way too low, like the kid's table at Thanksgiving dinner.  At the
local hobby store, I found some wooden balls that were about the same size
as the height difference.  They sell them as doll heads.  I installed one of
them on the bottom of each bench leg.  It looked kind of right because the
piano legs had those ball shapes there before.  The bench height felt right
again, but, of course, there was one more problem.

 

The pedals were way too high off of the floor!  It hurt the ankle to play it
this way.  So I built a small foot platform that fits in the piano bench.
Three more hobby store balls on the bottom tied in the look.  So after six
leg dollies, seven doll heads, and a little finish, it all looks and works
great.  There are days when the simple requests will, with no warning
whatsoever, send you into the realm of the Weird Stuff.     

 

 

Bruce Dornfeld, RPT

bdornfeld at earthlink.net

North Shore Chapter

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20090603/ef274b54/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: MARCH 09 006.JPG
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 66491 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20090603/ef274b54/attachment-0003.jpeg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: MARCH 09 005.JPG
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 65963 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20090603/ef274b54/attachment-0004.jpeg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: MARCH 09 004.JPG
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 53412 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20090603/ef274b54/attachment-0005.jpeg>


More information about the pianotech mailing list

This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC