Another week of installation and an amazing turn-out throughout the week from lots of different people. On Sunday I realized we can see progress in the choir room: the pile of stuff in there is getting noticeably smaller!
One of the big developments this week is that our new relay arrived. It’s the (expensive) piece of electronics that sits between the console and the wind chests we’ve spent so much time wiring up. When the organist selects a stop and plays a note on the keyboard, the relay is what controls which pipes sound. The relay has been installed on the wall in the swell chamber, and we’ve just started to connect up the wires from the wind chests to it. Once that’s done, we can connect the wires from the console next.
We’ve also started to install pipes finally! The first rank to go in was the 8′ Viol rank in the swell division. We’ve installed several others in both the swell and the great divisions, and more will go in in the following weeks. It’s great to see the installation starting to look like an organ!
Items accomplished this week include:
- Installed all the foot boards that we can onto the wind chests: 6 on the swell division and 7 on the great. After Bill does his work on the toe holes of the remaining ranks, we can install the final 4 footboards. Special thanks to everyone who helped with this – it’s an awkward and tiring job.
- Repaired a number of stripped screw holes in the bottom of the swell and great wind chests
- I re-hung the door in the swell partition so it opens inward now.
- Re-installed the swell shutter stop board, moving it from the bottom to the top of the swell shutters
- Secured the swell wind chest frame to the walls (it’s much less wobbly now!).
- We moved in two wind chests for the pedal & great divisions and mounted them to the floor in the great chamber.
- We installed various sky racks to hold the some of the larger/longer pipes, adapting them or fabricating new parts as necessary.
- Miscellaneous repairs to some broken woodenware parts.
- We installed several ranks of pipes, including 3 ranks in the swell division, and 2 ranks in the great.
- Wired up a small wind chest for 5 of the lower-register chimney flute pipes.
- Did a small amount of wiring on the relay – great thanks to Madeline and Oliver for figuring out how to get that going.
- Probably some other stuff I can’t remember…
While we were working on Friday, Murray had a great idea: everyone who works on the organ installation should sign it. We’ve started putting signatures on the support frame of the great division wind chest, so if you’ve helped, be sure to sign!
We had a great turnout this week, so a big thanks goes to everyone who helped, including:
- Carol & Murray Walker
- Tony Nickel
- David Folsom-Jones
- Caryn Machado
- Krys Call
- Liz Wesolowski
- John Vesecky
- Kelley Sutherlin
- Michael Freeman
- Madeline & Oliver Precht
Finally, I ran across an article in the Washington Post about a church in Alexandria, VA that has gone through an “organ transplant” similar to ours. I found some of the subject matter very familiar:
With ‘organ transplant,’ two churches find a home for a beloved instrument
Here is a video and some photos from our work this week:
The new relay. 
Tony working on rack and toe boards. 
The first rank. 
Tony and Krys picking pipes. 
Murray installs the 4′ Octave. 
Oliver puts his soldering skills to good use. 
Mike and Kelley work on foot boards. 
Oliver installing a Chimney Flute. 
Alex and Oliver installing pipes. 
Mike picks pipes for the Chimney Flute rank.
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