Timberkits Pianist
The Pianist is one of four musician kits. The other three kits are the Drummer, the Guitarist and Woody Blues. I purchased The Musician Pack, which includes all four.
Finished model.
Finished model.
The pianist flips off the cameraman.
Box, parts and instructions.
The stool legs had perfectly square corners so I used them as guides while assembling parts of the piano body.
Using a piece of threaded rod, I chucked each cam in my drill press and used sandpaper to round over the edges. It's important that the edges of each cam don't interfere with adjacent piano keys.
Instead of assembling the short side of the piano body I skipped right to the step of assembling the cams. I thought it would be easier to adjust and glue the cams if the camshaft were removable. I alternated between gluing/adjusting cams and test fitting the shaft. In the picture below I have finished gluing/adjusting all the cams. Each cam lines up with its respective key. I also made sure that everything was lined up to allow proper installation of the spacers and crank on the ends of the shaft. Now I'm ready to finish assembling the piano body and crank. Also note the rounded edges of all my cams.
I must say I'm disappointed with how the camshaft assembly turned out. None of the cam holes were exactly centered or square. Thus all the cams have a noticeable wobble. This results in movement of the piano keys when the keys are supposed to be at rest.
The camshaft is done and I'm ready to finish assembling the piano body and crank.
The instructions say nothing about assembling the pedal foot. All you get are a few diagrams. I went to the parts map and pulled any part with the word "pedal" in its description. From there I was able to use the diagrams. The pedal foot assembly is powered from one of the piano keys. That is, the "petal connector lug" is glued to the underside of one of the keys. As can be seen in the picture below, the glue dried before I noticed that the rod was not squarely seated into the pedal connector fork. But at least I got the overall length of the assembly correct so the foot moves as it should. That is, the foot should be horizontal and level when the associated key is in its down position.
The pedal foot assembly.
The kit contains four spacers that are described only as "12x10". I failed to notice that two are for a 5mm shaft and two are for a 6mm shaft. I got them mixed them up and used the larger ones on the smaller shaft. So I had to drill out the remaining 5mm spacers to fit the 6mm shaft. Always pay attention to the details!
Final thought: Having studied the finished model, I see no reason why the right and left leg assemblies could not be swapped around. The model would normally be viewed from the crank side. Therefore I think the model would be more visually interesting if the moving pedal foot was on the right side of the pianist. I know nothing about piano playing so I have no idea if such a modification would be realistic.