Andy Lawrence Pipe Organs

2008-08-28T03:59:00.002-05:00

Windchest Construction and other services to the trade.
Maintenance and Tuning
Basic Organ Instruction for Pianists

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2008-08-28T03:47:00.001-05:00

2008-08-27T03:52:00.004-05:00

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Organ Tuning Made Glamorous

2007-05-17T21:43:00.000-05:00

It's amazing what mundane tasks can be made to look exciting by switching camera angles at a mile per minute in a car commercial. It's a bit silly, but hey, I'll never argue with anything that makes something I do on a regular basis look glamorous and exciting.

Caught up through August now

2006-09-27T21:40:00.001-05:00

Wow, I'm catching up fast. That's good because I'm going to be really busy with school the next few months and will be getting behind again. This time I had a few miscellaneous pipes to deal with. Middle C of the Melodia has had a nervous tone for some time and an upcoming funeral moved that up the priority list. I managed to band-aid it for now by partially taping over the toe hole and re-tuning it. It was already about as sharp as it could go and blocking the windway flattened it more, but removing the tuning flap entirely got it approximately in tune. I'm beginning to think that the toe hole itself could be causing turbulence in this and other wood pipes with the same issue. When the current major projects are finished I'm going to try pulling all the wedges out of the toes of the windy/ turbulent pipes and start over. I never realized how much an out-of-shape toe hole can affect voicing until Steve at Russell & Co helped me voice those 16' Gedackt basses last week.

Also had to reseat one of the salicional basses that I had removed last week and put back. Just had to turn it a bit to let it seat on the toeboard properly.

The remainder of this month's work was just spent shuffling the old and new pipes now in temporary storage into something a bit less temporary. I was able to stuff most of them up in the organ loft for now. Hopefully getting them on ebay or keyboardtrader soon. Anyone need a 61-note 8' metal gedackt? How about 12 very soft very narrow 16' wood stopped basses?

2006-09-23T21:18:00.001-05:00

Thanks to Paul Dame the organ work is now caught up through July. We spent 2 hours getting the old wooden basses of the 16' Dolce Bass out, the new pipes in (just placed up there for now... not ready to speak yet) and shuffled the remainder around to take up less space. Now the trick is to get the pipes to make noise when you press keys. That'll take a little work.

2006-09-19T22:03:00.000-05:00

Purchased a 73-note gedackt from Peter Walker, and had Steve Russell help me voice the bottom octave which will replace the unsuccessful 16' bottom octave of the 97-note unit spitzprincipal currently in place. The rest of the gedackt I will probably sell as a 61-note set. The 73-note set apparently came from the late Bill Bryce's home organ, and appears to have once been a skinner swell open diapason. It is far from perfect, but for the price will be a whole lot better than what we had. Should beef up the pedal line slightly. Now I'm caught up to mid-July after doing almost nothing to the organ through the summer. This brings us into 3 projects in the works at the same time... the sick Dulciana, the 3 bourdon pipes needing restoppering, and now the installation of these 12 pipes and the sale of the remaining 61. So we'll be in high gear on organ maintenance for the fall, probably ending up ahead when these 3 are done.

Caught up to mid-May

2006-08-09T01:49:00.000-05:00

The dulciana has been out of tune for a long time now, which is strange because the rest of the organ has done pretty well. But I had Dan press keys for me while I tuned it, and I was startled at how far I had to move the tuning slides to bring it in, and even more strange, it was flat... organs usually go sharp if anything since down is sharp and that's the direction gravity usually goes. When finished I went back down to the console and played a bit... and it sounded out of tune again. I thought maybe dust had gotten in the pipes... but why only the dulciana pipes? Well, they're very narrow scale, maybe they are more susceptible to dust. Tried once more, then decided to give up and sleep on it. Well, I woke up in the night and had a duh moment... its a slider chest... the slider must be sticking.

The next day I went up to tune the crommorne with George at the keyboard, the other stop I wanted to touch up for the upcoming (now past) wedding. That went smoothly, except that I found that the dead low D pipe is dead because of the pipe itself and not a wiring or contact problem... will have to troubleshoot that later. While there I found the the dulciana slider is not sticking, but just has a loose linkage. That is good news, because if it was sticking I'd have to remove all the dulciana pipes and the open diapason pipes for access. This will be an easy fix.

So next on the list: Fix dulciana slider, retune the dulciana pipes, and troubleshoot dead crommorne pipe. Also get the low D pedal bourdon fixed and installed before the kids' organ introduction thing on Tuesday. I can live without the C# and D#, but need that D to demonstrate some music in the key of D.

April Organ Work (belated)

2006-06-07T16:57:00.000-05:00

I got a little behind with the organ work lately, so this stuff will count as my April activity. I decided to go after some problematic pipes from the 16' Bourdon (pedal bass pipes... wooden). In retrospect, this might not have been the best next item to attack. My hope was that they just needed restoppering, which is easy to do. But as soon as we removed them from the organ, I could see that they needed more work than that. It might have been better to work on more important things, like the fact that the bass pipes of the Melodia and Stopped Diapason are not even installed yet. But now that the pipes are out I might as well put them right before putting them back in. Peter Lloyd assisted me in getting the 3 sick pipes out of the organ. I then loaded them into the White Whale and brought them down to Russell and Co organbuilders to size them up for new leather for the stoppers. Steve Russell had some good advice for the best way to go about the new stoppers.

Unfortunately, the pipes need a considerable amount of woodwork as well. But this should be doable in my also-belated May installment, which will happen later this month.

These 3 pipes, which are about 100 years old, have been pretty sickly-sounding since their installation about 5 years ago. The 2nd D pipe also sounded bad, and having 2 bad D bass pipes is a real problem when playing anything in the key of D or d. A couple of years ago I restoppered the higher D (since that pipe was a whole lot easier to lift!) and it still sounds great. One of the pipes Peter and I removed this time is low D, which has a big crack about 2 feet long from the top of the pipe down. So I'll need to fix this crack with a new slice of wood, then put new leather on the stopper. It also has an internal crack in the wall behind the languid. I think I might just try duct tape on the inside of the pipe for that one and see how long it will last that way.

One of the other pipes (can't remember if it was the C# or D#) is going to need some filler in order for the stopper to seal well. Probably a job for bondo. Someone before me appears to have tried joint compound, which of course has fallen right out. The other of the 3 pipes I think may just need the restoppering to sound well again.

Here's some pictures" of the removal of the 3 wood pipes.

Winker Project Complete (March work wrapped up)

2006-04-04T13:57:00.000-05:00

(Except for a couple of other problems that were discovered during the project... will be fixed another time...)

Here's what I did on workday day: (click)

March (complete)

2006-03-28T22:37:00.000-05:00

I finished up March by working on the winker for the great main chest:[click]

March (so far)

2006-03-23T15:41:00.000-05:00

Installed the Great Octave 4/2 Unit Chest winker bellows to steady the wind pressure.

Jon Fick's Spencer Orgoblo Motor Replacement

2006-02-27T13:15:00.000-05:00

Over here

This is where the wind starts on this particular organ.
Haven't had to touch it yet, after, what, 3 years? 4 years?

February

2006-02-26T22:21:00.000-05:00

Now that I'm the official Curator in Residence of Christ Memorial Church's Pipe Organs (all one of them), I thought I'd keep track of what I'm working on. Here's what I did in February:

The church mouse

Tuning stool(New comment 2/26)

Planning for stabilizing the wind system(New comments 2/27)