Celeste Parts? Is it worth it?

[Robert Goodale]

Howdy,

I have an old Celeste here at the U. that needs either some serious
surgery or a big fire.  (Jen-co #6550117, no model number mentioned).
The thing was probably built in the 1950s and looks like it has seen a
few wars. Anyway, the keyboard is pretty funky.  The keys are made in
two pieces rather than one piece of wood, the head being a small
seperate block of wood.  The whole thing is held together by the plastic
keytop that is molded completely around the key.  Kind of like molded
keytops with fronts, except also down the sides.  I think Kimball, in
all it's glory, made some keytops similar to this. The plastic is
cracking, and thus the keys are breaking in two.  It therefore probably
needs a whole new keyboard made.  Based on it's design it doesn't look
like something that was ever intended to be "repaired".

Many internal parts are made from bakelite, specifically the hammer
heads and a double hinged pivot piece that is at the base of each
hammer, (sort of like an upright hammer butt). The damper heads are also
made from bakelite.  The bakelight appears to be in the beginning stages
of deteriorating, I.E. getting brittle and flaking.  For those of you
who are not familiar, bakelite was a product that was widely used in the
pre-plastic era which could be molded simuliarly to plastic.  It was not
flexible like plastic, but it worked for many applications.

I've started working on it doing what I can, but I think at best it will
end up being patch work.  So, does anyone have experience with these
things who would like to share? Does this sound like something worth
investing in?  I suspect it is not.  Where would one search for parts on
these things?  About how much would one of these cost new? (say, a basic
medium quality instrument).

thanks,

Rob Goodale, RPT