Trashing a piano for disposal

[Harry]

I have an old upright piano I removed from my basement outside and
disintegrated rather fast that I am going to trash. The keys and keybed have
been already thrown out. The trash pickup will not, obviously, deal with
something as heavy and suggests it be broken up.

Though I symbolicly hate to do it and silly as it may sound are quite
disturbed at hammering it to pieces, having played this piano as a kid, I
am going to have to take a sledge hammer and break up the cast iron harp.

Question: Should the strings be loosened and removed individually or more
easily just a cutting tool and cut across them. I am trying to avoid a crazy
mess. It is amazing how it held together since the late 1800s but outside
the wood cracked and disintegrated in days.

Harry

[Gary Rimar]

You should wait for the "professionals" to advise you before doing anything.
Having said that, I did have to once bust apart a piano this way, and I can
make the following recommendations.

1) If you wear appropriate safety equipment, you can hit the strings on the
harp at an edge with a four-pound sledge hammer and they will break. Again,
wear appropriate safety equipment (goggles, leather gloves, and overalls
thick enough so a whipping string doesn't puncture you).

2) Find a dumpster in which to place the harp once you remove it from
everything else.

3) Put the other pieces in an assortment of trash bags.

Best of luck.

"Harry" <not specified> wrote in message
news:50e7096e3e5b04ec...@news.scbiz.com...

[Katzelmacher]

Expanding on Gary's excellent advice, I will point out that the harp is made of
cast iron, and in many communties you can toss the mess of fragments and
strings into the back of a pickup truck and leave it for free at a local
recycling center as scrap metal. A little bit of money saved in your garbage
fees (unless you sneak the stuff into someone else's dumpster).

The harp aka plate is screwed to the back frame of the piano. You will have a
lot of wood components to break apart too. Some of those can go through a wood
stove, if you are careful about any metal when you saw them up.

I have seen people take a chisel ("cold" i.e. heavy duty for metal) type) to
the strings to break them. Bring a wirecutter too, and a large cardboard box
you can stuff wire into. You will probably need it.

So, Your childhood piano... why'd you take it out of the basement? Too far gone
to repair?

[Harry]

"Katzelmacher" <Yo...@fly.com> wrote

> So, Your childhood piano... why'd you take it out of the basement? Too far
gone
> to repair?

Yes. It was far gone needing another action rebuild and major service. I got
the piano free as a kid as my parents could not afford a new one and it was
given to me. Originally it was a player with the player system removed when
I got it as a child. The first piano as a young teenager that I played and
learned classical, and later popular music and jazz, before later getting
another one, but it sat in the basement for a long time. I recovered the
keys once with new plastic. The piano gave out some good music in its day
and pleased me and others listening. I need to get rid of it out of my yard,
so I must not think of the music it made during its life as I rip it apart,
painfully, though perhaps oversentimental and silly. It has to be done
though and be glad when it is finished. Thanks for the replies.

Harry

[drsmith]

In article <50e7096e3e5b04ec...@news.scbiz.com>,

If it were me, I'd loosen all of the strings before I tried anything. The
harp supports a great deal of stress and the risk of injury is pretty high
should anything go wrong. Once loose, you could easily cut them with
an angle grinder and then start hacking away at the harp itself. It may
be obvious, but please make sure you use proper safety equipment, too.

[donc]

Harry wrote:

We all gotta go sometime, no matter how useful we might have been.

donc