<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN"> <html><head><style type="text/css"></style><title>Easter Sunday</title></head><body> <div>Dear List,</div> <div><br></div> <div>It's not often one gets to mix business with religious holidays, especially for someone who doesn't observe many of the latter. But here is the 1906 5'8" Krakauer grand I've been working on this winter (among other stuff). This is the one with the beech action parts, the fracturing shanks which got replaced, and the reps which were brittle enough that I couldn't do my normal jack cradling. But it's finished and played its first Sunday service today. Restrung with the original board and block (3/0x2.5" mind you, and not up from 1/0s either). New Abel shanks and Encore hammers, and everything else in the action run through a bead-blasting cabinet, with lots of fresh felts and leather. Considering its original grimy, derelict condition, it's a true Easter miracle.</div> <div><br></div> <div>I did the proposal 1.5 years ago, the grant funding came through last Fall, the piano got moved to my shop after Xmas, and moved back to the church Monday of last week. Several people in the church were interested in refinishing it, and so they scraped it down in my shop, and when it got set up at the church, its mahogany case got oil-stained, and three coats of tung oil "Waterlox". (This photo was taken Friday evening, with the parts still off the piano. You can see them resting on a ladder as coat #2 dries. You can only begin to imagine the intricate victorian carving on the legs and lyre.)</div> <div><br></div> <div>I showed up at the church for an 8AM Pancake Breakfast, got roped into the 9AM choir practise, and spent my first Sunday in church since I can't remember when.</div> <div><br></div> <div>Speaking of rebirths, the original church for this small hamlet of Westminster West VT goes back into nearly 200 hundred years, but burned to the ground in 12/88 (wood furnace accident). The fire was so hot the original granite foundation stones had to be discarded. Within two years the community had rebuilt the church, heeding both the original colonial design and modern building codes.</div> <div><br></div> <div>Bill Ballard RPT<br> NH Chapter, P.T.G.<br> <br> "Lady, this piano is what it is, I am what I am, and you are what you are"<br>     ...........From a recurring nightmare.</div> <div>+++++++++++++++++++++</div> <div><br></div> <div><img src="cid:v04220801bac8f28efebb@[216.66.113.107].1.0"></div> </body> </html>