Greetings,
On Thursday the 24th three of us went up to the OB. I was joined by Gerry Doris and a new recruit Jack Loucks. Jack is a Ryerson graduate, former Nortel employee and currently on long term unemployment.
We tackled two problems starting with a number of wind lines that were removed to make way for the Style D trumpet chest. Gerry and Jack re-installed a 6 inch metal line from under the Warren string chest up to the distribution box that feeds the Warren Fr. Hn. and Clarinet. This rather simple task seemed to take forever, ducts were marginally too long and one pipe under the string chest was stuck so tight in the duct sealant that eventually we had to use a heat gun to soften the glue. But it is now completed. Then they started to put in the feed for the Style D. A ventil valve was installed at the chest end, and a pipe run across the floor and down thru a new hole. With two more elbows, a T and 2 feet of pipe the chest will be winded.
On Thursday the 10th Jack and I had been at the theatre, he removed the three chest bottoms from the new Style D chest and brought them to Ottawa where he installed DB connectors and made the cable to the Emutek driver board. All this is now at the theatre ready to install once we blow out the new windline. That day I started installing the newly cleaned shallots and reeds in that rank, the upper three octaves are completed. The reeds will soon be installed in the bottom 19 which have removeable resonators and the bottom of these resonators will have to be wrapped in glued on paper to keep the resonators from sticking themselves into the ferrules. We should also do this with the 12 offset pipes for the Morton trumpet and the bottom octave of the Warren Fr. Hn.
This leaves us with replacing two windlines in the main chamber, one to the tremulant for the FR. Hn. and Clarinet, which has never been finished, and re-routing the windline to the Warren Open Diapason 8 ft offset on the back wall upper deck. Then we can send the remaining pipe and fitting to the containers.
Second problem was dead notes and cyphers throughout the organ. We had inadvertently pulled a lot of pipes with cyphers when the problem was really sticking keys. I reseated all the pipes, the 8ft C in the trumpet and about 6 pipes in the string chest that do have cyphers. The Tibia chest that I converted from Morton magnets to Reisner's last year had a lot of cyphers which are easily corrected in about 10 seconds each just by unscrewing the cap and flicking out the tiny piece of dirt. Why Morton never thought of this idea is curious, it is the only weakness in the Carlsted chest design. We will likely have some of this problem in the style D chest but this chest also has the external magnet design. Wish we had about $600 per chest to convert the entire organ to Reisners. I played the Tibia chest up and down the keyboard about 30 times and there are no more cyphers and no dead notes. A first for that rank. And yes Brian, there is a missing anchor in one of the bottom boards but it does not leak so we will leave it like that until the bottom has to come off for some reason. The massive leak between this board and the chest has disappeared as well, heavy packing leather gaskets seem to have solved that one.
While this was going on Jack took the write up for showing the DVD and went thru the proceedure. He had a few questions but managed to get the DVD to show and the organ to play. Aside from a few sticking keys the console functions well, and the R/P plays OK. Jack has modified the writeup. He also knows how to find cyphers and correct them when possible or pull the pipe.
Just before we left I tried to play the 16ft Bourdons from the pedals and found two problems, they are sadly out of regulation, possibly the slide valves were moved by Brian when he was searching for missing tools dropped from above, and also the top four notes fail to play, GX thru B. I checked the connectors under the chest, and the ground wires and they seem to be OK. Jack and I will fix this next week. I will bring some known good replacement Morton magnets just in case we have to replace them. At least this chest has short sectional bottoms for easy access.
We have a tour coming on October 5th, morning or afternoon has yet to be decided. There will be 100 plus persons attending. This is a bus tour which is being hosted by the Town of Renfrew. We will receive a donation from the Town council in lieu of charging admission. This is a chance to show off both the organ and the DVD. Jack and I plan to tune the organ next Thursday afternoon.
From this point on I would like to do two things. First, there is still some maintenance work to do, dead notes, cleaning the chambers, etc. There are several ranks of the old Warren strings that are starting to bend over under their own weight. There is a rack board but the pipes have never been properly tied to it. Secondly I want to try and finish the two Warren chests in the top of the solo chamber, for the Vox and Concert Flute, we need to install about half the magnet valves and complete the installation of the bottom boards. Then we can find out whether all our labors over the years rebuilding those wooden valves will pay off. I have some reservations about our work which can only be dispelled with an on site test.
More as work progresses.
Salut
Ross
