This N.B. woodworker gives pianos a new lease on life — by taking them apart
Jim Allison deconstructs pianos and uses the wood inside to craft jewelry boxes, tables and harps
Walking into Jim Allison's workshop, you might wonder whether he's a woodworker or a piano repair man.
It turns out he's both — but he doesn't repair pianos so much as reinvent them.
Allison finds old pianos, often listed as free, out of tune, missing keys, and meticulously takes them apart.
He strips out the heavy iron frame, the strings, hammers, keys, and pedals and then extracts the wood inside.
He then transforms that wood into jewelry boxes, miniature furniture, and even new musical instruments like strumsticks, harps and banjos.
So far, he's deconstructed 42 pianos — but this summer marked his last. Allison says the pianos have yielded so much wood that this woodworking project has reached its coda.
Skipping the hardware store for Facebook Marketplace
Allison became a woodworker in earnest a decade ago after retiring from his job as an automatic transmission specialist. But he didn't consider stripping pianos for their wood until eight years ago.
"My next-door neighbour had [a piano] that she took out of her father's house after he died … and she asked me one day if I wanted it. And I thought, 'well maybe there's some wood in it that I can use.'"
The pianos turned out to be a treasure trove of beautiful, dry, rare wood — everything from "maple and birch and American chestnut, cottonwood or poplar and spruce and fir."
"Most of [the wood] is at least a hundred years old," said Allison. "It's been in a house that's fairly dry, and it was dry before the piano was built and it does not warp or twist or anything, so it was a joy to work with."
Soon, he was finding dozens of old pianos on Facebook Marketplace, listed for free. He would either deconstruct them on the spot, or load them into his truck and take them home to work on.
Allison loves seeing the reaction of people who learn the mahogany in their homemade jewelry box came from a piano that's at least 100 years old.
"They're surprised at where it came from, because for most people wood comes from the local hardware store or the lumber yard, and almost none of mine does."
The sentimental value of an old family piano
The pianos Allison takes apart range in age from 100 to 130 years old. Some of those pianos remained in not only the same family but the same place in the home for their entire lives.
"I get stories that their grandmother had it, and their mother had it, and they've played it and their kids maybe have started to play it, so you're looking at four or five generations," he said.
But all too often, the family had to downsize. The kids grew up and the piano sat silent, collecting dust.
"They're such a big thing and they're heavy and it takes a minimum of four people to move them, and most people when they're done with them leave them sitting where they are in the house," said Allison.
"Nobody wants to take them apart, and the only real way to get rid of it is to find some place to burn it and pick the steel out of it."
He'd rather save the wood than see the piano burned. Still, Allison said there can be sadness from families who don't want to see their beloved piano taken apart and destroyed. But he said he always gives families something to remember it by.
"I usually make a box out of the piano and give it back to them. … I usually write on it [with] who had the piano and where it came from and the year that I got it on the bottom of the box and they're quite happy to get it."
Enough piano wood to last a lifetime
Allison says the pianos have given him plenty of wood over the years, and he's ready to move on.
"I've got enough wood in there to last me for years. Because the stuff that I build doesn't use much wood. And I just don't need anymore."
He's become so well known in the river valley area that he routinely gets offers of free pianos.
"I have to refuse a lot of them, because I've had four in here at once and it takes up a lot of room, and it's two to three days to take one apart, so I lose a week or better just taking them apart."
Growing up, Allison said, he was surrounded by the sounds of the musical instruments — piano, guitar, accordion, mouth organ — that he or his siblings would play.
"I love piano music. I just can't get my hands to work to play one."
After seeing the insides of so many pianos, he can't help but picture all the mechanics — the hammers, soundboard and strings — when he hears piano music.
"I can see it all going."
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