Virtual Tour Step 11

The Secondary Valve Chest

Here is a view of the disassembled secondary valve chest. The valve chests are the heart of the player piano. This is the most tedious work of all. If you can rebuild valves well you will have no problem restoring pneumatic instruments.

Take a close look a the valve plates. They are corroded and have a green look. This is not unusual.

When removing the secondary valves one must keep in mind that they must go back in their original position. Each one must be marked so it's orientation can be duplicated when the parts are reassembled.

Oh man, look at the parts! Each valve was completely torn apart and rebuilt. Much attention must be paid to the valves to insure the unit will be responsive after the restoration is complete. As you can see much care must be taken to insure the valves and their respective plates remain paired together. The round metal objects on the newspaper are the metal valve plates. They were cleaned using a metal stripper and then sprayed with a protective coating of clear lacquer. At this point most of the secondary valve work is done.

Here is the secondary pouch board. The first section of pouches have been removed. After all pouches were removed the pouch wells and air channels were re-sealed with shellac as was used originally.

The pouch board is now complete. Notice the leather perimeter gaskets have been cut and glued in place. Everything worked well except the pouches were not sealed before the final assembly so the player did not work as well as it should and had to be disassembled and the pouches sealed properly. Now the unit works great.

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