Refinishing Old Veneer: How we repainted a Wurlitzer 700
Although we love a good original-condition Wurlitzer, we also refinish them occasionally. When refinishing, we try to choose models that are in poor condition and do not have any particular historical significance. (More on our criteria for modding keyboards here.) This keyboard definitely fit the bill.
This Wurlitzer is a 700, a model that features a tube amp, a round 12” speaker, and an unusual tone thanks to an early reed design. It sounds very different from a classic 200/200a. It also looks like a spinet piano — a nod to Wurlitzer’s roots as acoustic piano manufacturers — but its scale is much smaller. Most 700 Wurlitzers were finished in a thin veneer of exotic wood and a dark mahogany stain. (Our studio 700, however, is solid wood and finished in a light stain.)
This particular 700 had clearly been stored in a sub-optimal climate, possibly for decades. The veneer was chipped and had several ring marks on the lid. The keys were covered in brown stains. The unfinished wood inside the keyboard had aged in a bad way. It was, in a word, gross.
If this was a piece of furniture, it might just be a throwaway. It had all the hallmarks of cheap construction: thin veneer, particleboard back. In fact, it’s partially made of unfinished planks of wood. (They compose the base of the cabinet, where the amp mounts.) If it was a credenza, the correct course might be to throw it away and find a solid wood credenza to rehab instead.
But it’s not a credenza: it’s an electronic piano, and everything that made it a functional instrument was present. Well, kind of. The keys were gross and the amp was broken. But the action parts were all there, the amp was certainly fixable, and the keys…well, we didn’t really want to think about the keys. We thought the stains might come off? Maybe?? If not, we could always replace the keycaps.
We also have a soft spot for the 700. It represents a milestone in the evolution of electronic pianos: the first instance of Wurlitzer combining a traditional piano aesthetic with the electronic instrument concept. It’s futuristic in a really low-key way. The 12” speaker reproduces the instrument’s bass frequencies the way that they are meant to be heard. There was no question of throwing it away or even using it for parts. This thing was going to be refinished.
Prepping the keyboard for refinishing
The first step in refinishing a Wurlitzer is to remove everything from the keyboard and disassemble it as much as possible. We have seen more than one Wurlitzer that was clearly refinished by someone who skipped this step. Never do this. First of all, it’s way more work to tape up the keys than to outright remove them. It’s also a lot easier to physically manipulate the keyboard when the mechanical action is out, because the action comprises a lot of the keyboard’s weight.
The 700 doesn’t really break down into too many smaller pieces. Once we removed everything (including the particleboard back), we were left with the lid, the name board, the music rack, two legs, two cheek blocks, and the main cabinet. We also had the original bench, which broke down into three parts: the lid, the legs, and the main cavity.
The speaker cloth. We removed the speaker cloth very carefully, so we had the option of putting it back in. At this point, were were on the fence about whether we should preserve the original speaker cloth, or choose a brand-new one. Although substantially free of holes and other damage, the original speaker cloth was extremely fragile.
The pedals. We realized that the two pedals would be both difficult to remove and difficult to put back into place. For this reason, we left them in the keyboard during the refinishing process. However, we did unscrew as much as the assembly as possible, so that the pedals hung loosely and could be easily repositioned. This allowed us to easily work around them.
The music rack. We were very excited that this keyboard still had its original music rack. Although many people remove the music rack (which is how it tends to get lost in the first place…), we like the way that it completes the silhouette of the keyboard. We are always happy when it is present, regardless of condition.
This music rack only had one flaw: the wood at the edge was splitting. We repaired this by gluing the wood back into place, then clamping it down for several hours. The repair turned out so seamless that, once it dried, we could not find any evidence that it had ever been damaged. We were very lucky that, after the wood split, none of the loose pieces had been chipped away over the years.
Cleaning the keyboard. Next, we cleaned all the obvious debris and surface dust from the piano. As in all vintage Wurlitzers, there was a substantial amount of dust underneath the keys which needed to be vacuumed before we could even remove the keybed. Then, we cleaned the rest of the keyboard because sanding kicks up a lot of wood dust; it floats around the workspace and gets all over your face and in your hair. This is bad enough without adding vintage mystery dust and other people’s cobwebs to the mix. Also, dust bunnies clog sandpaper.
With the Wurlitzer clean and empty, we could see exactly what we were working with:
Structurally, the Wurlitzer was ok. It wasn’t rotting, broken, or on the verge of disintegrating. Imperfections appeared to be very surface-level.
The veneer at the bottom was chipping. This is not uncommon in 700 Wurlitzers. (See, for instance, our previous mahogany 700.) If you have the broken pieces of veneer, you can salvage the situation by gluing them back into place. (We did not.)
So, although the piece had good bones, the missing veneer ensured that 100% perfection was unattainable from the beginning. Although disappointing, this fact did make us feel a little better before we commenced the sanding process. As long as we kept mistakes to a minimum, it was officially impossible for us to ruin the keyboard by burning through the veneer. That bridge had been crossed a long time ago.
Sanding the Wurlitzer
Still, we were apprehensive about sanding because we had never refinished a veneered piece. Even when the chips at the bottom, there was still a lot of veneer left that might potentially be destroyed by us. Since most online sources are extremely flippant about veneered pieces (often advising that they should not be refinished), we felt that we were entering relatively uncharted territory. Would sanding instantly remove the veneer? Could we were use an orbital sander, or were we doomed to sand the whole thing by hand? Will this keyboard ever look good again?!?!?
We decided that we would only repaint the keyboard as a last resort: for instance, if all the veneer melted off and whatever was underneath could not be stained. Wurlitzer had sold conventional pianos for decades before designing the 700, and they had clearly used this manufacturing experience to create what is essentially a beautiful miniature of a spinet. The wood grain was very nice, and we wanted to preserve at least a little bit of the traditional spirit by staining the keyboard.
Since we planned to stain the Wurlitzer, we needed to:
Remove every last trace of the previous finish, even in hard-to-reach corners. Otherwise, the new finish would look blotchy and inconsistent.
Preserve the veneer as much as possible. Any bare patches that result from burning through the veneer would be visible under the stain.
Since the veneer was already missing in places, we planned on using a dark stain. We were considering either a deep mahogany color, similar to the original, or a black stain. Not only would black hide a lot of imperfections, it would give the piano a more modern look. Our upright Yamaha U1 acoustic piano is glossy black, and we thought that it might be nice for the Wurlitzer to adopt a little bit of that sleek character.
Since we weren’t sure whether the orbital sander would be too aggressive on the veneer, we decided to start with a spot test. Unfortunately, the Wurlitzer itself doesn’t really have any inconspicuous areas that are suitable for spot testing. So, instead, we started with the bench top.
After removing all of the previous stain and sanding the wood smooth, we assembled the keyboard just to help us visualize what it would look like after being stained. We disassembled the entire thing before staining, with one exception: we kept the bench legs loosely screwed into the upside-down bench base (this is pictured in the next gallery). This provided a safe place for them to hang out while they dried — without requiring us to figure out a way to hang them up (as we did with the piano legs, which is also pictured in the next gallery).
Using the orbital sander on the bench top was a complete success. It removes the old finish quickly without disturbing the veneer whatsoever. Because the frame around the veneered top is a narrow, carved piece, we sanded it by hand. Although time-consuming, this was the best way to remove the finish without compromising the shape of the carving. For this reason, we also hand-sanded the frame of the Wurlitzer lid, both sets of a legs, and all other small, curvy details.
Ultimately, the orbital sander was safe to use as long as we held it parallel to the surface of the keyboard. Tilting the sander allows it to remove finish faster from otherwise hard-to-access areas, but it introduces the risk of burning through the veneer. It also is difficult to accurately control the sander when it is tilted.
We did burn through the veneer in a handful of places. As our first veneered restoration project, we were experimenting the the best and most efficient techniques to safely remove the finish. Not all of these experiments turned out perfectly (hence the burned-through areas…), but we worked slowly and backed away from any methods that proved to be too aggressive towards the original veneer.
All of these imperfections were much more obvious on the unfinished keyboard than in the final result. We are completely upfront about this, because these new flaws are now a part of the keyboard’s history: specifically, the chapter where we attempt to make it beautiful and functional once again. The difficulty of refinishing veneered pieces is one reason why, in many circles, they are basically considered disposable pieces of trash. We disagree and we don’t think that flaws in a 65-year-old veneered keyboard are the end of the world.
We could have alternatively sanded off and re-applied new veneer. This would have been expensive, labor-intensive, and — we thought — not strictly necessary for a piece that is intended to have a second life as a functional instrument (i.e., potentially getting new ring marks, scratches, etc). We want this keyboard to be treated like a creative tool, not a museum piece. New veneer would increase the final price of the keyboard and even possibly inhibit the future owner from using it normally, as a daily instrument.
What sandpaper did we use? Coarse sandpaper has more removal power, but it also creates relatively deep scratches that need to be gradually sanded out. Since we were working with veneer, we were afraid that the scratches might be so deep that we’d sand through the veneer attempting to remove them.
For this reason, we removed the old finish with 120 grit sandpaper. Next, still using the orbital sander, we smoothed the surface with 220 grit. This step left superficial scratches the followed the pattern of the orbital sander. We sanded these out by hand with 320 grit paper.
Removing the chipped side embellishments. The 700 has a veneered binding around the permitter of the top part of the keyboard. This camouflages the planks of wood that compose the base of the keybed.
On this 700, part of the side embellishments had snapped off before we acquired it. (You can see how they are missing in the first gallery of images, above.) Because these embellishments are slightly curved, creating an accurate replacement would have been difficult in our current setup. We considered replacing them with straight pieces. Even so, we would have had to veneer the pieces to get them to blend in at all.
Instead, we opted to remove them altogether. With this binding gone, you can see the planks of wood. We do not mind this. It provides visual contrast with the veneer in a similar (if less elegant) way than the original binding did. With a dark stain, you would have to look very closely to notice that anything is missing at all.
Staining the Wurlitzer
When sanding was complete, we loosely put the keyboard back together so we could determine our next step. We did not expect that the original veneer would look so beautiful. It is difficult to appreciate the patterns in the wood grain under all those layers of deteriorated old finish.
Although we burned through the veneer in a couple of places we decided that the damage was not extensive enough to warrant painting the keyboard. We opted for black stain, which would subtly showcase the veneer while smoothing over any inconsistencies in the finish. By de-emphasizing the different colors in the wood, black would also highly the sleek geometry of the keyboard. We also really like black pianos (For instance: our U1.)
We hung the music rack on a guitar stand while we stained it.
Even if we had sanded without errors, it would have been difficult for us to use a light stain due to the fact that the trim areas were plain wood. Unfinished, the light color of the trim contrasted sharply with the richness of the exotic veneer. We felt that a light stain would not allow these two areas to cohere as well as a dark stain.
Prepping for stain. Before staining, it is important to remove all of the wood dust that is leftover from the sanding process. We used a shopvac, then gave it a pass with tack cloth.
We set up our staining area with plastic drop cloths, then brought our materials over so everything would be within reach. We put the main Wurlitzer cabinet on a folding table, hung the legs from a microphone stand, and used a guitar stand to hold the music rack.
Staining the keyboard. We started with a wood conditioner, which we applied according to the directions on the label. Then, we started staining.
This was our first time using black stain, and the experience was a little different than with wood-tone stains. Usually, we apply stain and then almost immediately wipe it off, because we prefer the look of things that are just stained lightly. We quickly learned that we did not like the look of “lightly stained” black, which, if you think about it, isn’t actually black at all. It’s hard to describe what it is: de-colored wood tone…? A desaturated mess? It was definitely black, but it brought out the underlying color in a way that made you wonder whether your eyes were lying to you. And, paradoxically, flashing point arrows could not have more thoroughly highlighted the difference between the light trim and the veneered areas. Even though everything seemed, at first glance, to be black! This was exactly the thing we were trying to avoid. In a word, we hated it.
We realized that, if black stain was going to work, it had to actually appear black in the end. So, for the first time in our lives, we really got serious about letting the stain penetrate. We completely flooded the surface, set timers, and then stared at the slick glossy wood as if we could will it to absorb with just the force of our eyeballs. We left it on for longer periods of time — two, then five, then ten minutes — always ensuring that we applied the stain in a consistent layer, so it wouldn’t look uneven after we wiped it off.
Finally, we got the result that we were looking for: a uniform black stain that reveals the wood grain. Since every angle reveals different amounts of wood grain, this is a very dynamic finish. We hope that you enjoy it as much as we do!
We gave the keyboard several days to dry before putting it back together. We are giving it a couple of weeks before we consider it fully “dry.” Otherwise, although it may look and feel dry, the finish will be fragile and may warp under stresses that finished wood should normally be able to handle. For instance, a light tap might cause a dent. This is more common when you apply multiple layers of paint — stain goes on thinner and dries faster — but we like to play it safe. Either way, in our experience, it is better to wait longer than you think you need to — particularly when it is cold outside!
When the keyboard is ready, we will give it a layer of protective wax. The final step will be putting the speaker cloth back on (which we washed!). We plan on putting it back together soon, so check back to see the finished product!
Further Reading
Browse all of our articles on restoring vintage gear. Or, click on an image below.
