I read with interest Mark Kinsler's post yesterday about "spinetizing"
upright pianos.  When this practice was commonplace in the 1940s and
'50s, it was called "restyling".  This was done with old upright pianos
of all types (not just player pianos).

When my father left the U.S. Army in 1953, he found employment with
the Kurtz Piano Company of Nashville, Tennessee, where his job was to
disassemble and cut down upright pianos for restyling.  He said they
never paid for old uprights, and that the pianos were "paid removals".
Basically, the owner paid to have the old piano removed, and of these
pianos about half were players.  My dad used to call player pianos
"monsters" because of their extra size and weight!

The first thing he did was to remove all the panels and hinges.
(My father claimed forever that he invented the electric reversible
screwdriver out of a drill at this company, saying he needed a way to
remove and replace all the continuous hinge screws quickly).

If it was a player piano, all of the mechanisms were removed and piled
in a back room of the store to be burned.  My father said there were
times when the stacks of player mechanisms was higher than your head.

The lead tracker bar tubing was cut out and placed in a separate
container to be picked up once a month by a man who bought it from
Mr. Kurtz for some reason.  He remembered barrels and barrels of piano
rolls being burned every week, along with excess wood case parts that
were cut off.

As for the restyling, the first cuts to make were the upper case sides.
The case was cut straight down on both sides about an inch in front of
the tuning pins, just to the top of the hammer action.  Then, another
cut was made at 90 degrees toward the front and directly straight out.
The result gave a large rectangular area cut away from the sides of the
case.

Then the large heavy toe blocks were cut off flush, and the legs were
removed.  The entire case was covered in either Formica or Leatherette,
and a pair of spinet legs was mounted.  New front boards were made
mostly out of what remained of the lid and front from the cutting job.
Finally, a short, wide mirror was installed side to side across the top
where the case was cut away.

When the piano was reassembled and completed, they had a blind piano
tuner named Smitty go over the entire instrument.  The finished product
was called a "Mirror Piano", and they were priced on the floor at about
half of what a new average-priced spinet piano cost.  The resizing of
the top of the case, along with the new legs and prominent mirror on the
top, gave the illusion of a smaller piano and was very well received by
the public.  According to my father they sold fast, and they probably
did about 10 of them a week.

Dad left the Kurtz Piano Company in 1957.  It seems ironic that I'm
now doing the exact opposite work that he did, but every time I take
off a continuous hinge with my electric screwdriver I think of him.

John Rutoskey
Baltimore, Maryland