I have a player piano in my Aerostar van.  Really!     Well, not the
whole thing, but I do have the plate and back in there.

Recently I had a customer who wanted to move to another house.  He had
a rebuilt player in the basement and said he had been required to
remove the basement staircase to get it in.  He had taken the staircase
apart and reassembled it back then.  He did a good job twenty years ago
and played the piano ever since then.  He did not want to take the
stairs apart again since he had sold the house and did not want the
damage.  He was threatening to take an axe to it, but thought it would
be a shame if it was not put back together someday.  We tried
dismantling the player piano down to the back only.  Everything went
into the car and went to the storage except the back, strings and all.

The still strung back we tried to get up the stairs but it was a couple
of inches too much, even at a diagonal.  Because it was so close, we
decided to try and not break it up for the dumpster.  Since we wanted
to save the piano we got out a re-stringing guide to fill out as we do
with restorations and de-strung the back and removed the plate.  The
back still would not quite go.  This time it was about an inch too big.

The Skilsaw(tm) circular saw was pulled out and we did an angle cut to
remove the top back corner of the pinblock end to end, as well as a
smaller amount of the bottom soundboard corner edge.  The back came up
the stairs and went into the van.

I don't know when I will be able to get the piano back together.
Perhaps one of my apprentices will want to learn soundboard work and
stringing.  We have enough to do for the next several years, but it
will go back together someday.  It is a Starck Simplex player and they
are very fine pianos.

D.L. Bullock    St. Louis
www.thepianoworld.com