Chickering upright worth rebuild?

[Mike M]

Hi all,
	
	Tuned a 1850'ish Chickering upright today sn-11302, these folks just
bought it and are considering a rebuild if not a complete restore. It
needs everything you would suspect, dampers, hammers, strings, pins..
looks like someone replaced hammers and/or dampers 1000 years ago and
the bottoms of the hammers hit the tops of the dampers, enough to gouge
the felt on the hammers. Has a brass hammer rail and funky metal plates
that crimp the dampers in place. The bass bridge has a few small cracks
and the tenor bridge section has a few hairline cracks, soundboard two
small cracks but is stable, structure is very sound, tuned up well. 
	They would rather put money into an old piano than buy new... I
remember reading on the list way back that some of these Chickering
uprights were garbage, is this one worth rebuilding? No sentimental
value here and I explained they could put much more into it than it's
worth but they didn't seem too upset by that.

	Opinions?

Thanks,

Mike McCoy
So Central Pa Chapter 170
mjmc@ibm.net