Appraising Pianos - Restoring piano hammers

What we are going to talk about is voicing. This is a piano key. If you look at it, this is felt, very compressed felt. And this is attached to wood. All held together with glue and little staple up top. This strikes the strings. Now, sometimes after many many years, it will be come grooved. We all have seen pianos where there is real deep grooves. Sometimes this whole end of the striking surface, just flattens right out. If it gets out of shape, you have some choices. You can use something like this, which has little pins. A nasty little guy here, and you will take this and you will stick it in here, kind of fluff up the end. A piano technician should only do this. But, this is what voicing is. If, for some reason, this is not enough, and we need to reshape this, we will actually use sandpaper and we will reshape the surface. If that is not enough, lets just replace these guys. Get a new one in. And you can see there have been some replacement parts on this piano also. Can you see that? Replacement parts. But, none of these keys have been replaced. But, if you can look down this way, you will see grooves on the top. This needs voicing, this definitely needs voicing, and shaping, and using the pick to fluff out the outer edges. Remember, piano inspection is a dirty job. Be ready to get dirty, and wash your hands often so that you don't transfer a hundred and fifty years of dirt from one part of the piano to another part. Be respectful of the piano.