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Thank you Retsacnal. We used to spend hours a week just talking, he was quite the colorful curmudgeon and will be missed by those who knew him.

The Weber has made it to my home for a few months. I have a tuner coming in 2 weeks. Considering it hasn't been tuned (or on its legs) in over 2 years, it isn't too far out of tune. The refinisher will be taking it around April. He'll strip it completely, sand and stain it, and do the high gloss finish (as it had in 1916).

I will be making another search back at my friend's home Saturday, for a missing linkage used by the player system to engage the sustain and lift the dampers. Art tells me if it cannot be found, a new one can be made.

Once the refinisher is finished with the piano, it would, ideally, be going to Art for completion of the player work, but if he can't take it yet, it will move the 100 miles back to me, and make another 100 mile trip later to have the player work completed.

Would love to see some updated pictures!

Enjoy it while you have it! And good luck finding the missing pieces.

Here are a few photos while the Weber is here at the house. The lid is at the refinisher already, as is the matching bench. Under all that dark crackled varnish the wood is African Flame Mahogany. It should be nice once stripped and refinished.

Indeed!

Awesome! Thanks for the pictures. I'm way excited to hear how this turns out!

Just a quick update. While my friend who was working on it before he passed away was having a lot of challenges on this piano, he was definitely one of the 'good enough' persuasion. Now that Art Reblitz himself has taken on the piano, I know everything will be perfect. I received an invoice for January for work done on the stack. Art and his assistant sent me 3 pages of prose and 5 pages of pictures showing the issues they found and progress they made. In January they put in over 90 hours of labor on the stack restoration. While this will be more costly, I have a great deal of confidence on the quality of the end product.

Interesting update! Art Reblitz is certainly renown!

A status update. I do believe my friend who passed away was in over his head. The pneumatic stack (which contains the 88 bellows, one for each note, and all the associated pneumatic valves for each) was in bad condition. That said, I do not believe there is much that Art Reblitz cannot do. He and his assistant put in over 250 hours of labor on the stack, between January and February, and that part of the project is complete. It will be some time before Art has room in his shop for the piano as a whole to come in for the rest of the work.

The refinisher is running a bit behind, it looks like he can take the instrument in May now. My tuner likes the instrument, and brought it into tune (it had been on it's side for nearly 3 years with new strings, so you can imagine it needed a bit of tuning). He wants to do some regulation next visit. On these players, that takes a bit of work in preparation. I have the original factory instructions, and am working through all the steps so I can make it possible for him to pull the action. I need to be able to do this anyway, before the piano goes to the refinisher. I'll feel better with the action safely stored here at the house when the piano is being refinished.

While the piano has been here, I did some work myself. 23 of the original ivory keys were chipped. It took me about 20 hours of labor with AcryliKey to repair the chips. I got much better at it after the 1st 5 or 6. Now they keys look decent and feel good.

Love hearing the update Dave, that things are seemingly moving along well.

Interesting, put me down as one more follower to this story.

Good luck.

What a cool project! Looking forward to seeing more