Can You Scrap Pianos?

Hey all... looking for advice or information from anyone who has scrapped a piano. Can you really do it first off?? There are tons of free pianos around here and I hear there are some nice and plentiful brass parts but not sure if its true. Getting stuck with a piano you don't want isn't much fun. Thanks for input

The ratio I'd think wouldn't be very great. All that wood...Doesn't mean I wouldn't take one just to find out for myself. Only then can I cross that off the list of "have-never's" .

I would give one a shot as well. Watch out for those strings. They can do some serious damage I believe if they snap under tension. There are a LOT of them. I think they are tensioned with a square peg or something along those lines, but the first thing I would do is get something to fit on your drill and take the tension off of them all first.

Just my 2 cents. Would love to hear if you try this.

A couple of other things to think about with these. I am not sure what type of wood is used, but if taken apart by means other than a sledge hammer, you may be able to salvage some nice wood for the local woodworkers in your area. It depends on the type of wood though.

Some old pianos that you find may still have ivory on them. They would need to be fairly old though.

Check here. Scroll down to "construction". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano

The wood is usually maple or birch. Some of the strings are wrapped in copper. The plate which is something along the lines of a mother board for a piano is cast iron and you may find a few old aluminum ones.

i recently did scrap one, only because a guy was paying me to haul it off and my scrapper intuition set in and i simply couldnt just dump it. haha. the one i scrapped i think was a baby grand and all of it wasnt even there. There was a heavy cast iron piece in the back that all the strings attached to and it was a job getting it apart. There is a ton of screws and bolts that hold it to the wood. The strings were steel with copper wrapped around them, and it would have took i dont know how long to unwind all the copper so i just cut them and took them in like that. i got paid for copper breakage for them which was only .10 a pound, they weighed 8 pounds. so there was only .80, i would have gotten a little more for them just throwing them in with mixed metal which was paying 12.50/100 at the other yard. Also the only brass i found was the two foot petals, which didnt weigh that much either. i wish i would have weighed the cast piece to get a total on how much i got out of it but i just tossed it on the trailer with a load of mixed metal. but all in all for the time i put into taking it apart and the wood that was left over, and just the plain bulkyness of trying to load it, it wasnt worth it to me, but go ahead and try it yourself, maybe you will have better luck with it then i did, but i dont plan on taking any more of them apart.

Try unwinding just a little of the copper on one end of the wire, and clip the other end. Then hold the copper while you pull out the steel strand. I would think that would work. If it does, it'd be a lot faster then unwinding.

Originally Posted by Saroro

Try unwinding just a little of the copper on one end of the wire, and clip the other end. Then hold the copper while you pull out the steel strand. I would think that would work. If it does, it'd be a lot faster then unwinding.

That is crazy enough to just might work. Now I want a piano to strip.

Let me know if it does. We always have a ton of free pianos around here. Getting the copper from the wires would be amazing! I could also talk to some piano repair men about their scrap wires from repairs!

That big metal piece weighed 120lbs on one I scrapped a few weeks ago. The only reason it got scrapped was because it was covered in cat pee. I think all the strings turned out at about #15. I did not strip them, because I assumed that like a guitar string, they are more like 75/25 steel/copper.

I don't like scrapping things like that. I think I'd rather sell it for $10 than scrap it for $15. Ones that are badly damaged or otherwise unusable are a different story.

As far as ugly and out of tune ones go, find a musician friend to tune them, give him $15 and a beer, refinish them, and SELL BABY SELL!!!

Great info guys, thanks. I'm a music fan and everytime I look at that piano I feel bad about scraping it...lol I'm just going to hold onto it and maybe get it tuned. Thanks again for info!!

My local "freecycle" has a piano listed for free. I am going to take a look at it. The poster even says it is mahogany and may be able to find a use for it. I hope it is still there and I can detail what happens. If I waste a couple hours or so and end up with some wood to burn in my firepit that I intend to get, so be it by me.

If I get this, I will be looking for local woodworking groups that may want it. It could be for a few bucks or even better, but given free to them may end up with some scrap connections.

We shall see. It may be gone already.

Saroro...you gave me a good laugh...intended or not.

One thing to salvage from the older pianos is the ivory on the keys. Look at them to see if they are "different colors" and seem to have a grain to them like growth rings on trees. If they are solid white and mostly the same color you've probably got plastic. Take the keys and wet the wood and you can usually pop off the keys by inserting a utility knife underneath the ivory veneer.

People will buy the ivory to use in inlay restoration or for art projects. Last time I scrapped pianos was about 12 years ago and I was getting about $1.50 a key for the ivory. The soundboards, which were cast iron got scrapped in with the general scrap. I got them off the wood by smashing it with a sledgehammer. Save any ornate woodwork too as you can sell that too.

There is a ton of free pianos around here, but I've found that by the time I pay the gas, and strip it down, I really wasn't getting a lot of money for it. I got under 15$, and it was a PITA to get out of the persons house.

I found an old electric organ in a thrift store dumpster today... had about 20 miles of copper wire in it!