Reservoir
The wind reservoir was completely dismantled and restored with new leather.
A new bottom board was fitted, where the original was not long enough - this
enabled a conventional screw fixing into the floor of the organ upon re-assembly
- it was botched in 1990. The spill valve was re-leathered, and all springs,
hooks and eyes were de-rusted and treated with black Hammerite. This gives it
a clean and tidy look, and should prevent rust for some years.
The wind trunking from the blower had been routed through two 90 degree bends so I needed to make a new manifold box with only one bend. A new double-layer cow-hide trunking was made to take the wind up into the main chest via the original dust filter.
During this work I found that the glue was taking its time to dry, so fetched my hygrometer. This quickly read 95% relative humidity. At this point I abandoned all work in the shed and concentrated on small parts in my own (dry) workshop. When the reservoir had been completed, I was ready for testing chests etc. on the wind. More pictures here.
Bass pipes and chest
What a mess these pipes were in! The cellos had been fixed using the original
wooden blocks, but some had been mutilated with the use of unsuitable screws,
not even fitted squarely in the existing holes. Some had parcel tape wound round
their tops, to hold them together after splitting. This was removed, and the
splits repaired properly. The long pipe feet (to allow speaking room for the
bourdons) had been wound round with black tape at their tips, presumably to
ensure a good airtight fit, which hadn't worked. This was all a far cry from
how we had left it in 1983.
I cleaned out all the pipes and reset the stoppers, tuning slides and freins for correct speech. One stopper was so tight that its handle came apart, and had to be re-pieced back together. I eventually got the stopper out and noticed that it had been inserted the wrong way round (some of these pipes are slightly trapezoidal). All sixteen pipes received generous coatings of shellac and varnish, as they would not be accessible after being placed back into the case. The action chest was completely dismantled and cleaned. The pallet surface was not flat, so needed careful planing. The pallets were re-leathered, as were the primary motors, and the box fitted with new gaskets.
Once the chest and pipes had been completed, it was time for testing. The whole assembly was mounted in an upright position inside the lorry, and the blower connected, via the overhauled reservoir. When switching on the supply, the motor ran for a few seconds before dying. The power supply had fused. The yard was supplied by 3-phase, but fuses were not accessible to me. The yard's owner needed to fix it, but that wasn't done for a few weeks, so the testing process had to be put on a back-burner, and work continued at home on smaller parts.
Eventually all was working once more, so testing and adjustments were carried out. Then the cellos were removed again in preparation to the unit being installed back into the plinth area of the case. That done, the cellos were re-fitted, the whole assembly mounted into position, and the case placed upright once more. I positioned the case so that I would have access between the baritone case and the closed lorry shutters. So often the space left here is too narrow to gain access to the front of the organ without lifting the heavy lorry shutters. The case was then bolted down (properly this time) to the lorry's floor. More pictures here.
Main chest
This is a conventional bar-chest containing 94 channels, three of them large
ones for register ventils. Splits in the table (the chest's top board) were
pegged where they crossed the bars beneath, and the splits themselves were filled
with a sawdust compound. With the pallet-box and calico removed I could see
that glue meant for sealing it had lifted in spectacular fashion. Also, five
repaired splits ( done in situ a few years ago - keyhole surgery) became clearly
visible. The liberal use of hide glue for sealing the chest had been disastrous.
This type of glue, if applied too thickly, shrinks in dry atmosphere, and can
come away from the wood. I spent several hours pulling it away from pipe-holes
where it had lifted, and then spent several more hours brushing a patent "white"
water-based glue (not PVA) into the cracks, and down into each channel. This
wasn't wood glue, being designed for fabrics, and it doesn't dry completely,
remaining somewhat flexible. It combines with the original hide glue, softening
it so the result is a fully-sealed chest which remains sealed when moving in
an inevitably changing climate. I call this glue "good-stuff", for
obvious reasons.
This work was done with the chest sitting on top of the up-turned case inside the lorry. The idea was to keep it from the worst of the weather. Instead it suffered from the lorry's inadequacies, and more splits appeared after a sunny spell. These had to be treated as above. This was an early warning sign that all was not well with the lorry, and that something needed to be done to prevent further problems later on. A disclaimer was sent to Graham Atkinson together with an urgent request to get something done about the lorry before more damage was caused. This was ignored, apart from a statement that this lorry had been prepared in a hurry. In fact, he had acquired the organ in August 2003 (unless it really was owned by Ian Cottam after all), and didn't deliver it to me until September 2004 - plenty of time to get a lorry fully prepared and insulated. A further seven months separated the tipping-up of the main case, and its setting upright again. The case could have easily been removed completely and stored in the shed, leaving the lorry free for essential work.
The holes left after mounting screws had been removed from the table were found to be rather worn and were very likely to allow the screws to strip the threads when re-assembling the organ. So all these holes were plugged, following which I lightly planed the entire surface of the table, and the bar side of the chest. The table was then treated with shellac, rubbed in "french polishing" style.
Then came the tedious task of testing the channels for air-tightness. This entailed covering the entire bar side of the chest with masking tape, and similarly covering all pipe holes on the table. Then, uncovering a hole on the each channel in turn, blowing hard into it while noting if the tape covering the neighbouring channels moved. Only then was I satisfied the chest was secure, and all masking tape was removed.
Then came the task of covering the channels with calico. This was done using my special "good-stuff". Then it was sealed using a mixture of good-stuff and poster paint. Any further movement of the timber would have to be severe before any splits would occur again in the covering (although the table itself would still be vulnerable). Now the previously cleaned and leathered pallets could be fitted using combination squares for accuracy. These pallets needed to be guided with dress-making pins - always stainless-steel, and angled slightly outwards to prevent the pallets jamming between them.
Attention was then turned to the pallet-box - the wind chamber mounted below the chest, containing the pallets and their springs. This was cleaned out of all loose glue-sealer, which was re-done with shellac. A new gasket surface was applied, and the spring mounting rail installed. I had fitted this with new springs I had made from phosphor bronze wire, so they won't ever rust. Tension could be adjusted later. The chest and pallet box were then re-united. The original face-board was re-used, after cleaning and lining with bedding leather. I lined-in the original stamped notation strip with black ink for ease in recognizing what the various channels do, and re-applied this to the chest just above the face-board. Now it was ready to be re-installed into the case. However, the case needed a good coat of white paint over the entire inside, after de-greasing it where the Irvins had been over-zealous with the oil can. Once installed, it was connected to the trunking below. All open wind-holes were then blocked with bits of rag so testing on the wind could be done without losing pressure.
One of the home jobs had been the renewing of all the main pushrods (called "stickers" in the trade), fitted with new exhaust pallets. These were carefully set to be of identical length so final adjustment of the puff-board later would be made easier. More pictures here.
Main riser and back pipe chests
The main riser (in three sections) was cleaned inside with a pipe-cleaner and
fitted with new leather gaskets. The chests, which are merely thick laminated
boards with horizontal channels to carry pipe-wind to the various ranks, were
blown out after stubborn pipe feet had been removed (done by softening the glue
with denatured alcohol, fitting suitable dowels into their bores, and carefully
easing them out using bottle-top grip pliers), then treated with shellac on
external surfaces. These chests had warped over the years, so I had an adjustable
steel support made. This would be fixed to the RSJ holding up the main chest
in the centre (perhaps not an original fitting but nonetheless very welcome).
I needed to modify the stay mountings for the trumpet rank of the clarinet mixture
to take account of the chest's warping. At each end, the chests rest on batten
supports mounted on the case sides, and these needed to be re-positioned to
prevent twisting and undue strain. More pictures here.
During the school summer holiday in August 2004 I busied myself on the keyframe at home. This work will be described in detail later. Graham Atkinson telephoned me from time to time. On one of these occasions he stated that he was considering transferring the organ from the lorry back onto its open trailer (newly made by Benny Irvin in the 1990s). This was an excellent idea. Better still would have been not to have transferred it in the first place. The entire outfit would have fitted under the shed roof, out of the sun's direct and damaging glare. Unfortunately, it remained only an idea, and nothing came of it.
Violin and baritone chests
While I waited for decent dry weather earlier in the year, when the glue would
actually dry, I had busied myself with the violin and baritone chests in my
home workshop. These are very similar in construction, where the violin chest
carries 5 ranks of pipes, and the baritone carries only 2. Both these chests
are fitted with their original Marenghi lever actions, which had to be retained
at all costs, despite being very "wrong" in pneumatic action terms. The wind
pressure inside tries to open the primary exhaust valves instead of holding
them closed, with a very real risk of ciphering. This makes for extremely fiddly
and accurate adjustment. The lever springs need to be strong enough to hold
the valves shut against the wind pressure from within, but not so strong the
puffs cannot open them sufficiently to close the internal valves. This is essential
to allow the internal pneumatic motors to "exhaust" correctly and pull-down
the pallets. However, these actions remain susceptible to ciphers if dust or
grit gets onto the valve surface, preventing complete closure. It may not be
enough to make a note sound, but is very likely to prevent a note going off
once started. Proof of correct setting-up can only be realised once mounted
into the organ and on their correct wind-supply from the main chest.
The internal pneumatics were re-leathered, all valves renewed, and all springs re-made in phosphor-bronze. The chests were thoroughly cleaned inside and out and given a coat of shellac. Then they were re-fitted with hardware, and thoroughly tested on the wind, working the levers by hand. However, testing with their primary puff-boards would have to wait until later, when more adjustment then would be inevitable.. More pictures here.