Hopefully I won't get jumped all over for saying this, but I believe
that piano rebuilding and mechanical player action rebuilding involve
at least two quite different skill sets.  When I had my piano rebuilt
a number of years ago by the wonderful (regrettably late) Karl
Verhnjak in Vancouver he wanted nothing to do with the player action
so I stripped it out of the piano.

As I am now preparing that piano for my own retirement home (on an
island) the piano and the crated player action has travelled 3,000+
miles so the player action could be restored and re-mated with its
piano by Bill Kearns in Ottawa.  Bill has made it clear that he does
not fix pianos but he appreciates the fine work done by the Verhnjak
shop.  At the end I hope to have a very fine piano once again with
a very fine player system.

The two schools that I know of which teach piano technology (The
University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, and the North Bennet
Street School in Boston, Massachusetts) do not, again as far as I know,
involve themselves with either player systems or reproducing pianos.
I was at a conference at the University of Western Ontario just last
weekend and a Boesendorfer representative certainly gave the impression
of being less than enthusiastic about even their CEUS [electric player]
system.  I also expect that most of the students coming into the training
programs have had little if any exposure to any form of mechanical music.

Finally, I would think that the pneumatic techniques involved in historic
player pianos would probably be more akin to pipe organ construction and
technical skills, at least in part.  Even if the system is "suck rather
than blow", at least it involves wind.  A lot of skills are needed to
maintain a wind, percussion/stringed apparatus.

Stephen Dunsmore