Steve Leroux

Despite a few good days of working in the shop, progress has all but ground to a halt.  I had a minor triumph with the following video: actual noise from an actual bell when you press an actual key! Sadly, the excitement was short-lived.  All that wobbly misguidedness just wouldn’t do, so it was back [...]

I did some brief tinkering in the workshop today while Ruby played in the backyard with a friend. In order to amplify and reinforce the sound coming from each bell (the metal plates that make the noise are called bells, even though they aren’t bell shapes), one puts it over top of a precisely dimensioned [...]

Well the whole notion of a “balance” pin (or two) just wasn’t working out so I went with a flange-and-pin joint like everywhere else.  Unfortunately, because of all the drilling and holes I’d put into things, and due to a bit of short-sightedness, this flange joint is currently only one-sided.  And so the key lever [...]

I thought I had this figured out, but… nope.  Still don’t know how to do the balance pins. What’s a balance pin?  Well, it’s the main pivot point for the part of the piano that the key is directly attached to.  In modern pianos, it’s a pin that goes vertically through the key, and the [...]

Things are progressing in celestaville. Not as quickly as I want, of course, but time in the workshop can be scarce. This weekend I made some good progress, though! A few weeks ago I drew up all the plans I needed to build the action for each piece. I sketched each piece of wood individually, [...]

I spent a few hours in the shop today with the intention of busting out prototype #2, but things didn’t go quite as planned. I made some modifications to the design with the intent of simplifying things, but unfortunately progress went into the other direction. I’m dealing with small pieces of wood (typically 1″ x [...]

I finally got the opportunity to get out into the garage today and bring some of my sketches into reality.  Here’s what about 3 hours of work got me: It’s a prototype of a piano action — the part that hits the strings (or, in my case, bell) when you press a key.  It’s currently [...]

I spent a lovely evening at one of my favorite bars doing more design work on the piano action last night: Well, actually what’s pictured there is a completely different mechanism I came up with while running yesterday afternoon. It’s a reverse-left-off jack for a new type of instrument I’d like to build that I’m [...]

A wise friend once said to me: “Steve, you should build a boat.” She offered the advice as a suggestion for healing; it would keep my occupied, give me a purpose and a distraction. So I did: I made a tiny boat for her and her husband as a wedding present: …and then continued on [...]