Keyboard: Cutting out the sharps

With the keyboard cut apart into sections of 3 and 5 naturals and the sides of the sharps already cut, the next step is to finish cutting out the sharps by cutting through the front part of each with a fretsaw. I used a 32 TPI blade that's about 0.5 mm wide: thin enough to turn sideways and slide down the kerf between sharps and naturals:


Once the sharps were free, the natural sections remained, held together by the key heads:


These were cut apart at the bandsaw, and then the rack pins were inserted into the holes in each key end. Next, the sides of the keys were sanded to eliminate shavings and fuzz (the basswood used for the keys produces long stringy shavings when cut) and to make sure that no excess wood was visible beyond the edges of the boxwood key covers. Then the keys were installed onto the key frame:


Lots of work still remains: the sharps must be glued on, the keys must be balanced so that they fall back predictably, the boxwood surfaces must all be levelled, any unevenness in the key positions must be corrected, the balance pin mortises must be burnished so the keys operate without binding, and so on.