Any advice for destroying a piano?

Driven5 said:

Sounds like a good excuse to build a trebuchet.

Having built a trebuchet for fun and hijinks, it would take a really big one to chuck a piano.

I'm here if you need advice or plans

If the keys are genuine ivory, they may be desirable to crafts people to reuse for wood inlays, jewelry, etc.  However, there are regulations about selling ivory but I don't know the limitations.  Much of the cabinet wood is probably veneer, so it may be difficult to reuse for other things.

Ship it with FedEx back to yourself? Its guaranteed to be delivered as a pile of splinters. All you will have to do is sweep up the remnants.

The Western Development Museum here had an entire warehouse full of pianos that had been donated.  The roof leaked, and they were all destroyed.  While sad, there is pretty much a zero market for real pianos.

ShawnG said:

The used piano market is nonexistent.

I couldn't give my mother's 80 year old Heintzman away and it's actually a good piano.

I have a 1920-something Chickering 6 foot baby grand Ampico self-player in my living room.  It plays mediocrely at best by hand and not at all in self-play mode (and hasn't in my lifetime).  The finish is shot (and has been my entire lifetime).  I have a tub or two of self-player song rolls in my basement.

The only reason it's here is my mother was getting rid of it and DW talked me into taking it.  The only reason it's STILL here is that DW is convinced that it must be valuable.

I cannot convince her otherwise.  If it was up to me I'd pay someone to make it go away and get 25 square feet of living room back.

Got a spare Morris Marina sitting around?

Drop it on a roadrunner

stanger_mussle said:

Ship it with FedEx back to yourself? Its guaranteed to be delivered as a pile of splinters. All you will have to do is sweep up the remnants.

And fight for your $50 insurance

It's sadthatpianos have no real value anymore, but pianos have more than organs if you can believe it. I got our organ delivered for $20 and they were nearly weeping with joy at their good fortune that someone was taking it.

You'll wanna loosen all the strings at the very least, I'd probably take it apart nicely and try to save some stuff myself

Of course the flipside is that there are some very nice pianos available to those that want one for virtually, or actually, nothing.

9 years ago as I was cleaning my parents house out I paid a piano mover to take an old former player piano out of the basement , best $250 I spent.  

I put it on Craigslist as being in my garage for free and had a guy pick it up with some buddies 2 hrs later.

I think the dump charged an additional $75 for a piano.

Pay someone to get it out of the basement, then worry about disposal.

The casting is gray iron. You can probably break it up into smaller pieces with a sledge hammer if you want to.

I worked at the last foundry in the US that pours 'piano plates' as they call them (for Steinway). 

I'd dismantle it. Get a piano key, drop the tension on the strings, and have a lifetime supply of high-strength (2000 MPa) wire for repairs, then take apart the body and use or sell the wood for woodworking projects, then take the plate and make some legs for it and use it as a table, then use the keys and mechanism for kindling. 

We got our piano for free from a friend of my father-in-law, for reasons lost to time.  Maybe we thought our daughter would play?  We paid the movers.  It took me a while to realize that he got the better end of the deal.

chandler said:

stanger_mussle said:

Ship it with FedEx back to yourself? Its guaranteed to be delivered as a pile of splinters. All you will have to do is sweep up the remnants.

And fight for your $50 insurance

We got ours outside, took it apart, burned the wood and took the metal to the recyclers. It wasn't old or special, not a quality instrument but was a chore to take apart. 

My parents tried giving theirs away.  For years. 
 

my dads gonna take a sawzall to it and it will end up in a dumpster.  Sad it's a nice piano, but my kids don't want it and I don't. And I'm sure not gonna pay money to move it half way across the country. 
 

quick Craigslist search will so you how may are for sale and even free.  Good luck. 

We used fire.

side note:  The amount of grief we caught on social media for "Destroying" a musical instrument was stunning.   This was a crappy warped student class piano.

This truly was the most honorable send-off for this device.     A friend was actually playing it while it was burning.

We sledge hammered them apart for the scrap metal and burnt the wood. I've torn down 8 pianos when scrap was part of how I made a living. Piano strings hurt if they smack you, after the first one I just wore gloves and long sleeves 

A local garden center made a few cool water features out of several.

In reply to lotusseven7 (Forum Supporter) :

Those are cool. Also disturbing.

1988RedT2 said:

Of course the flipside is that there are some very nice pianos available to those that want one for virtually, or actually, nothing.

A good friend of mine saw a Bosendorfer grand with the extra keys at an estate sale on a Friday afternoon. Asking price for the piano that I think is about $140K+new? $9,000

He stops back on Sat, its at $6000

Sunday morning he goes over and finds out it needs to be gone that day. He offers $2500 and they take it. He found a piano mover, on a Sunday, and had it in his house before noon.

Trebuchet throws a piano - YouTube

Something like 15 years ago my father was working on a womans' home and she asked if they knew anyone who wanted a grand piano, free.  My dad decided it was too good a deal to pass up so he got some friends to move the thing into his home.  Then, when he retired, paid movers to haul it (and every other blessed thing they owned) from Cape Cod to Pensacola where it occupies an entire room of the house.  He passed away in '13 and my step mother spends just a few months a year down in Florida.  I have a feeling that before terribly long I'll be going through the piano disassembly process.

When I was born (mid 60's) my dad's parents offered up their piano if I was named after my dad's dad.  I've been forever grateful my parents said they'd rather buy their own piano than name me Elmer.  And now I'm even more grateful I never had to get rid of said piano, as that would have been extra-painful if it was around because I'd been named Elmer.