Alright, so I wanted to share a bit about this little side quest I got myself into recently, this whole “billy joel stl” thing. It sounds kinda specific, and well, it was.
See, I’m a pretty big Billy Joel fan, always have been. And a while back, I jumped on the bandwagon and got myself one of those 3D printers. It sat there for a bit, mostly just looking cool, until I thought, hey, why not mix these two things? Make something unique, you know?
So, my big idea was to print something Billy Joel-themed. My first stop was, of course, looking for an STL file online. You’d think for a guy as famous as Billy Joel, there’d be tons of cool models. Pianos, maybe a little “Piano Man” caricature, something. But honestly, the pickings were slim. I found a bunch of generic grand piano STLs, but nothing with that specific Billy Joel flair I was hoping for.
I downloaded one that looked promising. On the computer screen, it seemed okay. But then came the printing part. Total disaster. Seriously. The supports the slicer software added were like a crazy spiderweb, and when I finally got the print off the bed, it was a mess. Tiny details were just blobs. I spent ages trying to clean it up with a craft knife and some small files, but it ended up looking like a sad, lumpy candle that had been left in the sun. Not exactly the tribute I was aiming for.
That got me thinking, maybe I needed to get my hands dirtier. So, I decided, “Okay, I’m gonna try and tweak one myself.” Now, I’m no 3D modeling whiz, not by a long shot. I poked around with some super basic software, the kind of stuff absolute beginners use. My plan was to take a simple piano STL and maybe try to emboss his name on it, or a song title, or even just his initials. Sounds easy, right? Wrong. That was a whole different level of fiddly. Aligning text on a curved surface, getting the depth right so it would actually print and be visible… man, it was frustrating.
Why all this effort for a little plastic trinket, you might be wondering? Well, my old man is an even bigger Billy Joel nut than I am. His birthday was on the horizon, and I was stumped for a gift. I didn’t want to get him another CD he already owned or some generic merch. I wanted something from the heart, something I’d put a bit of myself into. And, let’s be honest, I also needed to justify the money I’d spent on that 3D printer that was mostly just taking up space.
So, I kept at it. Print after print. I must have gone through a good chunk of filament. Each failed print, though, I learned a little something. Tweaking the layer height, playing with the infill density, slowing down the print speed for more detail. It was a slow burn. Lots of “Aha!” moments followed by “Oh, for crying out loud!” when the next print still wasn’t quite there.
Eventually, after what felt like a dozen tries, I got something I could live with. It wasn’t the highly detailed masterpiece I’d initially envisioned. Far from it. I ended up taking a very simple, almost blocky, miniature grand piano model and managed to get the words “Scenes From An Italian Restaurant” – one of his absolute favorites – very subtly embossed along the fallboard. You had to look close, and the letters were a tiny bit wobbly if you were really inspecting it, but it was there. And more importantly, I’d actually managed to make it myself.
So yeah, that was my little adventure with the “billy joel stl.” It turned out to be less about the perfect finished product and more about the process, the tinkering, the learning. And you know what? My dad actually loved it. He put the little piano on his desk. Said it was the effort that counted. And I guess he’s right. Sometimes these little projects, these deep dives into trying to make something, are more about what you figure out along the way.
