No wonder that a keyboard, if you purchase it, costs upwards of $1,000.00!
Adjusted the spacing of all of the keys, both naturals and sharps and glued on all of the sharps. Trimmed the natural key heads to the correct length, all have to have 1/16” trimmed from the rear of the key head in order to clear the descending sharps. Masked off and began spray painting the sharp sticks with ACE flat black enamel. 3 coats today. I had to purchase an additional can of black spray paint. I was only able to spray 3 coats with one can.
Spraying the sharp sticks
Completed spraying all six coats of flat black enamel and then removed all the masking tape.
Trimmed and fit all key caps, i.e. capped the teeth. Primarily accomplished using a couple of small planes and sandpaper to touch up the ends. Completed all 30 heads and 30 tails, now all will need to be glued in place.
Capping the teeth
After laying out all of the front key heads it was obvious that they were not all the same length and that they’d have to be trimmed. After checking the squareness of the front edges I clamped them all together with the fronts flush and used a new sheet of 120 grit sandpaper to try to sand the entire set square at one time. This worked pretty well to a point, but there were six pieces that just weren’t quite right. So I re-made the six key head front pieces using my new Performax sanding machine and a small miter-box, which made the process much easier than last time. Test fit all the key heads and all line up well except the first key which I will tweak tomorrow before beginning the gluing process.
Confessions of an Amateur Luthier 