I will be making weekly entries, depending on my workload in the shop and on-site.  Feel free to post questions about all things woodworking, project ideas, and your thoughts about our website.  I’d love to know how we can improve our services to our customers.

As for me, I’m quite happy about the subject of my first entry!  My wife and I returned Tuesday night from a lightning quick trip to New York, and a cool visit to the Steinway piano factory in Queens-Astoria.  My wife is the Choral Music Instructor at Sun Prairie High School, and she is ready to start her first full school year at the brand new High School building there.  It was a massive project, and it includes an expansive music department and Performing Arts Center, which is really the equivalent of Madison’s Overture Center in its scope and quality.  Truly, Sun Prairie could easily host a touring Broadway show with this facility.

This would bring us to our trip.  The community of Sun Prairie worked hard to raise the necessary funds to purchase a Steinway Concert Grand, a “D”, to adorn their beautiful new stage.  This is the pinnacle of hand-made instruments of its type, and I was not going to miss the chance to see the place where these instruments are made.  As part of the purchase, one is flown out to New York to sit down, play a number of new pianos, and personally make your selection.  An honor for my wife, and she’s been lucky enough to make two of these selections now.  I got to go on that trip, too!  The first was made for a previous position at Oregon High School in 1999, but we weren’t able to tour the factory on that trip.

The tour was definitely the highlight for me.  In an age of automation, these works of art are still made entirely by hand, or at least with hand-controlled machines for some of the steps.  The factory floor is as it was 100 years ago, with little change.  Hard-working artisans of all nationalities work the pieces with hand tools, shaping the wood around jigs whose shape has not changed since Steinway’s first patents in the mid- to late-1800’s.  Amazing.  And, for the few outsourced parts they use, they call on American companies, and their raw materials are rarely sourced outside the States.  All of the above served as further inspiration for me to continue doing things as we’ve always done.  Honest materials, time-tested joinery and techniques, and solid finishes.  A good recipe.

Talk soon!
Andy Black