Update on work at the OB, and some observations.

Hello everyone,

First I would like to acknowledge the work done by Jack Loucks during my absence for two months in the frigid south.

Jack, aided on one occasion by his son Ben, replaced all of the leather nuts on the chrysoglotte valves, the ones on the outside that had dried out and were constantly splitting and rendering one note at a time unplayable. The inner nuts are not under any stain and these can be left to soldier on for many more decades. Now we have all 49 notes working and better yet there is no loud constant air leaks from the valves. At that time, Ben a piano student, had an opportunity to try playing the organ.

Jack also re-assembled the regulator on the stage that winds the new Style D trumpet and the Kinura. This regulator was donated by Gilles Bruyere two years ago and never worked properly. Turns out the two push rods on the pallet valves were too long, proper length ones were installed and it is now OK. He also fixed a massive air leak at a ventil valve on this regulator. As well he has stopped up a lot of air leaks at screw holes in the chests that appear to have been the result of pipe support racks that we are not using.

Finally he has the style D trumpet almost working, there are a number of cyphers to fix, probably all due to bits of dirt or wood chips in the air ways as this is a newly constructed chest. Unfortunately we cannot test or play this rank from the console at this time.

On the last two trips we have been working at curing a number of small problems, some serious and a few just annoyances. We had a leaking pouch on one of the chest bottoms on the Tibia 8 foot offset chest. The bottom board was taken to my shop and all six valve pouches releathered. Also as is our standard practice shrink tubing was
installed on the magnet coils to protect them from accidental damage when reinstalling the bottom boards. With this sucess we decided to remove the other bottom board and it has also been releathered and upgraded.

At one time we had the 16 foot tuba offset, a Wurltzer, working from the console. We found it no longer worked, ground wire to the chest was off for some reason so we reconnected it. All 12 notes played, so we cut off the wind to it. Last week we discovered that the driver board was OK but the problem seemed to be with the controller card for this chest, unplugging this card and reinstalling it cured that problem.

Now at the pedal board it plays in the wrong octave, not the 16ft but at the 8 foot pitch. Maybe in the specification in the console?

We also find that we frequently have to adjust the screws setting the tension on the pedals, as many of the screws seem to relax allowing the pedals to cypher. Suggestions on how to solve this problem permanently are being solicited.

We moved several boxes of small pipes from the top of the solo chamber to storage, and we finally after 10 years installed the cover on the vox tremulant. Housekeeping.

We also removed the bottom boards, again, from the Open Diapason chest. Many of these pouches had been releathered in a piecemeal fashion as they failed over the last 10 years. The bottom from the largest pipes, 20 notes, required only one pouch to be releathered as someone had done the entire bottom just before we acquired this organ.
I had recently done one so the remaining 19 valves were refaced with new valve leather and the magnets covered with shrink tubing. The other bottom was a total mess, I have stripped it and replace all but six of the pouches, the six were recently done by ourselves. These bottoms, all three, will be replaced this thursday.

Now aside from a few dead notes in the string chests we will finally have an organ that is playable for a concert. This has been my goal for the last two years, but without help from Jack, Brian and Gerry this woud never have been possible. I would like to do a concert this spring, bring in a pro player from the USA or? and spend a bit of money promoting the organ. If this occurs it may well be the "Fairwell to the OB" concert, as I cannot continue with this project by myself and the limited help I get from the above mentioned. We have to get some of the locals interested, how??

My goal when I became President of OVTOS was to preserve/conserve what we thought at the time was the only remaining Warren TO in existence. This we have done, albeit perhaps all we have done is expend a great deal of time and money just postponing the inevitable. At the time we moved from Ottawa to Renfrew there was a lot of interest and a decent volunteer base, but over the years many of the original active members have moved away, or passed on, and at times I feel I have been abandoned with this project. We are close to getting some of the Warren playing, the Vox and Concert flute chests only need about 75 of the small valves installed and we can try playing it, not from the console because there are control problems that have to be resolved, but at least we may be able to finally hear what they sound like.  There are two other chests in the solo that have been converted to receive the  new plug in valves, one is left to do and we could have another 3 ranks playing, a tuba, an oboe and the large scale violin cello. We have about 500 of the valves rebult and tested, and there must be at least another 300 here in my shop that only need testing. So it is not a hopeless endeavor, well maybe.

Several years ago I built a player piano roll player for use on the Kingston steam calliope, where it never was used, so I converterd it to play at the OB, but it needs some cards attached to get it going. This could be used to play the organ for demo purposes before/after concerts. (or for testing?).

We spent somewhere about $15K on the DVD and the projector, and this has never come to fruition. The DVD is mostly finished and all the technoligy is in place. What is lacking is promotion, we need some form of advertising, a rack card and a poster would be a good start, and someone in Renfrew to go to the theatre as needed to run the DVD and do the paper work. Murray, with my blessing, is getting more use out of the projector than we have so far. Also we should make an audio recording of the DVD sound track and be prepared to sell copies of the DVD to the public.

Enough said.

Salut

Ross

Thursday at most at the O'Brien

Ross,
  Hope you and G have a safe trip home. Sorry, we couldn't arrange to get all the snow removed in Ottawa before-hand!
 
I was at the OB today. I pulled up to the parking lot, and only then realized I didn't bring the key for the theatre with me. Crap. Then I remembered the paint place, walked in there, was told Murray was in the theatre...sure enough he was.
 
The bulk of my day was working on the trumpet chest. I tightened the ventil pipe feeding air into the chest and then tried to fix the cyphers. I identified which pipes were cyphering, then off with the relay bottoms to remove dirt.  But no luck there.  I noticed quite the air leak between two ends of the chest (bottoms), so I removed (eventually) all three. One of the chest bottoms was missing a gasket on the end, so I made a gasket and glued same to the chest with some hide glue. This resolved one leak anyway.
 
The entire chest is already wired/plugged into a pod, and so I attempted to fire up each of the remaining trumpets using a test lead.  This was ad-hoc at best. Some pipes came on, then stayed on...hmm. Others didn't spark up at all. So, I figured it best to investigate these issues under your excellent tutoring.
 
I quickly checked the second regulator. With the ventil outlet closed, it has ~6.5" rise. I couldn't see any hole to measure the 6" air pressure, nor turn off the air at the chest, so I wasn't able to perform this task. I did notice that when the ventil outlet it opened, both regulators 'drop' (fall?).
 
At one point, the 7.5 hp motor/fan unit stopped. I thought someone had turned it off on me. But it would appear the on/off switch-breaker tripped.  I restarted the motor, but I did notice the breaker box was warm to the touch (versus the the 6 hp breaker box). Maybe this has happened to you in the past?
 
Well, that's it for now. A little disheartening as I don't have much progress to report.
 
Jack

More antics at the OB

Ross,
   We, my son Ben and I, made it up to the OB today. Our high school kids are finished their term exams, so with some free time it was a good opportunity to show Ben around the OB and get another set of hands working on the theatre organ rebuild tasks. 
 
I'm proud to report we managed to knock off two the three projects you detailed for me a few weeks back, as follows:
 

1. Plastic Nuts installed on Chrysoglotte.  After a few instructions, Ben sat patiently (with his iPod for entertainment), removed, inspected and replaced all the leather nuts on the lower unit. (It was real handy having a hard copy of your instructions nearby for Ben to refer to.)
2. Regulator Reassembly. This was a brute, but I managed to get the regulator reassembled. I purchased a 90-degree attachment for my drill at the local Rona so I could drill pilot holes from inside the wind chest/chamber. I used the trouble-light to check the seal around the regulator/chest surface, and everything looks fine. Next I installed the paddle board assembly, then with Ben's help, we reassembled the top cover by feeding the standoffs, etc through the cover as per your instructions. After reattaching the outlet wind line, I showed Ben how to fire the console up and let him play while I went back into the chamber to check the reassembled regulator's performance. You'll be pleased to know that the regulator height is operating at 6-3/8" (measured from bottom to top surfaces of regulator); AND the outlet wind is exactly 10" (with the ventil value at the trumpet chest closed, 8" when this value is open). Hurrah!

 
Finally, I video-taped Ben playing one song on the organ, and I'll provide a link for this when I have it. 
 
On the way home, a snow-storm hit us and it was so bad that I pulled off the highway in Arnprior to wait it out.  30 minutes later, the bad weather had passed and we were on our way home again.  Ben seemed to enjoy his day, even showing off to his Mom the blister on his thumb from installing the plastic nuts on the Chrysoglotte.
 
Jack

Antics at the O'Brien today

Ross,
  I did manage to get to the O'Brien today. No Murray.
 
I started by putting the regulator back together. Along with my Quik-Grips, I was able to get the wind outlet wooden frame fastened properly. (I remember this part leaking too.)  Then I moved to installing the inside screws, only to realize I didn't have a red-handled Robertson in my tool box...argh!  I managed to locate a proper Robertson screwdriver in the basement and fastened the right-hand side of the regulator from the inside.  It was real hard work. So rather than continue, I figured I'd simply postpone this job, make my lifer easier, and bring a small drill, powered screwdriver and robertson bit and make some proper pilot holes on the inside for my next visit.
 
So I moved on to the other project of replacing the leather nuts on the Chrysoglotte.  This was methodical work, and I didn't break a sweat like with the regulator reassembly.  I checked all the inside nuts and interior leather disks on the top unit, and these items all appear to be in really good shape.  I swapped out only the outside leather nuts with the plastic ones you provided.  I noted that there were already two (larger) plastic nuts on this bank, so I replaced these two with the smaller ones in the bag to keep all the nuts a consistent size.
 
Finally, I sparked up the organ and fooled around for about 20 minutes on the console before heading home.   Pretty neat having the whole theatre to myself and making all sorts of noises!
 
Jack