I’ve been looking for a piece of furniture to use in the living room to house the computer et al that drives the projector.

My friend was about to throw away an old player piano he had in his garage, and after looking at it, it occured to me that this would be perfect.

The first thing we had to do was remove the insides.

Some parts came out a lot easier than others. The piano was made by Vose and Sons in Boston, and by the serial number looks like it was part of a batch made in 1930. The whole thing runs on compressed air from belows in the base, powered by two fold out pedals. The only thing that gave us real problems was the iron “harp” that holds the strings.

All the tuning pegs had to be removed one at a time, and then the iron harp had to be cut into 3 pieces with an angle grinder.

Having taken almost everthing out we loaded onto Pete’s truck and took it home.

It spent about a week in the garage being cleaned with lemon oil, then re-stained and finally rubbed down with some polyurethane.

Some of the veneer is still loose, and needs to be glued, but now it looks a lot better.

Now I could start to strip down the digital piano and install the new keyboard into the old piano body. Some work was needed with a router to make enough room for the new keyboard.

This project is going to take a couple of weeks to complete - the worse thing I can do is rush it. Despite the piano’s size there isn’t a huge amount of space inside, and so everything needs to be placed very carefully.

I could start

Since I’m “resting” (as thespians say) between assignments. I’ve just spent the morning watching the 1980’s movie Flash Gordon. What a great film. I remember going to the old cinema in my town (now a “sports bar”) to see this on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

Although some of the critics panned it for it’s gaudy set design and costumes I think it’s an absolute visual treat - and with a soundtrack by possibly one of the best rock bands of all time (Queen) - who could ask for more.

I really impressed with the visual effects - done well before CGI - so much so that I found the email address of one of the effects team and sent him a message.

Turns out that the cloud effects where made by pouring milk, ink and Ribena into a large tank of water. You can’t get more British than Ribena.

And Brian Blessed is in all the best films.

“Diiiiiiiiiiive!!”