How to make a piano keyboard

Step 10 Sawing the keys

George Dodd showed cutting the the keyplank into individual keys with a bowsaw with a wide blade, and Audsley recommended using a bandsaw with a fine blade and a sliding table. I don't have the right combination of these so I used different saws to cut the straight parts in the front and the angled parts in the back.

I cut the fronts with an old Craftsman scroll saw, the kind with a spring and with about 2.5cm blade travel. I made a new blade guide to work with a broken pullsaw blade I ground to fit. It has a 0.6mm kerf, cuts straight, leaves a decent surface and survives cutting through glue and ivory without heating up or dulling.

I drilled small holes at the ends of the short cuts in front of the sharps, and then bandsawed from the back side to the ends of the long cuts to divide the keyplank into smaller, more managable sections. I took the big blade and guide off the scrollsaw, and cut to either side of the sharps threading in an ordinary blade and then starting it with a footswitch. Afterwards I cut the sections into individual keys with the bandsaw.