Thread: recycle / upcycle

have a chap in Victoria that makes lots of musical instruments out of old pianos if that's your thing.Worth the recycle potion if you look at the timber used in the old pianos.

Originally Posted by wedgtail

Hi has anyone thought of recycling an upright piano for the timber. ....

Haven't ever tried a piano, but I salvage a lot of old, near antique furniture for the timber. I look for the prefered timbers - cedar, blackwood, Huon (hopeful!) - in solid form. Have not been successful with veneered, avoid plywood and modern crap, and panelling makes reuse complicated.

I like these as I get a lot of usable timber:

• tables,
• wardrobes and dressers,
• church pews.

I find it hard to recover usable timber from:

• chairs,
• "tizzy" Victorian stuff,
• smallish pieces.

The stuff that I recover tends to be much cheaper than new timber, its been air dried for ~100 years, and is old growth, not plantation sourced. Stable!

Our club was given one and we pulled it apart quite a few years ago but didn't really get much useful stuff from it. Mainly veneered material that's visible, some bits of 'deal' timber from the inside, and some 'dentine' trimmings - to this day I don't think anyone has used anything other than 'deal' from the guts of it. The tiny bits of 'ebony' on the keys are too small for anything more than making small dowels/pins. I ended up getting sick of it taking up space and dumped most of it!