08-12-2021

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16-11-2021

Organ revival

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Today Tuesday 6th October 2021 we began to do some long awaited restoration work on the 1934 'Compton 3' manual Theatre/Cinema Organ. It was installed back in 2017 by its owner Chris Milburn, various friends and some members of the Shed, particularly Bob and Ernie who were very instrumental (get it?) in putting the plumbing in which believe me was no easy task.

It has been been working and played fairly regularly but now Chris wants to bring the organ up to ‘Concert Standard’ as there are several issues with it. The particular job we have begun involves 15 chests in which the organ pipes sit. So today a workshop with a professional organ builder with the apt name of ‘John Hammond’ was run. He maintains quite a few ‘Church’ and ‘Theatre/Cinema Organs’ at various locations around the country.

Within the wooden chests we will be working on are a number of wooden devices that let air up the pipes to produce the notes. We will be replacing the leather (fine sheep skin) that form the bellows including a circular cover which the bellows lift open to let the air up the pipe when the key is pressed on the console. There are 1,100 of these devices that have to be re-leathered and this will be the first time since the organ was built which is 87 years ago.

It was about 3 years ago at an organ concert at the Thorngate Hall in Gosport, where another ‘Compton 3' manual the same age as Titchfields, that I got talking to Richard Bunce who is a Shed member, he told me the work that was intended and as I have always liked the Cinema/Theatre Organ I thought it would be a very interesting project, so it was then that I joined the FMS. Unfortunately the restoration work has only just come to fruition. There were six of us today being instructed, the idea is that once we have got knowledge and know how to do the work, we will instruct others who are interested in doing the same. Hope you have enjoyed this story and the photos included.

A video and slide show is being prepared so that should other members wish to join our merry band in the future they can see what is involved. The video will be available at some point in the near future on our You Tube site.

Author: Norman Hart

17-11-2021

Thank you Norman for the first episode of our organ refurbishing project.

We've now had our first day of working on the Vox Humana chest, and made a good start. Removing the little bellows units from the windchest was quite easy, but we had to be careful to label each one so that it will go back in the same place. At first sight they all look the same but we found there are four different sizes.

Terry did a grand job of removing the residues of glue left behind inside the chest while the rest of us (John E, Thommo, Bill, Geoff S, Norman and Richard) started stripping the old fabric off the bellows and cleaning them up ready for re-leathering. We developed an efficient production line and got about half of them done.

Next week we'll finish the rest of them and make a start on cutting the leather, and boiling up the glue to fix it in place. That promises to be both messy and smelly!

Monday will be our regular organ day, and Kevin has kindly let us establish ourselves in the store room above the Shed where we can work without disturbing anyone else.

Author: Richard Bunce

24-11-2021

Scalpel please!

We began our second day of the organ refurbishment project with a lot of debate about how best to cut the leather so that we don't waste any of it - it's a very flexible thin sheepskin, and very expensive. Eventually Thommo made the first incision - see picture.

Meanwhile, the glue-pot was warming up and sending its special aroma all over the building. Several of us had a go at re-leathering one of the air-motor bellows. It's a bit fiddly manipulating tiny pieces of leather and a messy glue brush, but we'll soon get slick at it.

All the motors are now stripped and ready, so next time we can crack on with a production line of leather cutting and glueing.

Author: Richard Bunce

30-11-2021

The third working day on the organ project.

Today's team was seriously depleted by health concerns and holidays, leaving only three to carry on the good work, but didn't they do well!

Thommo has concentrated on cutting the leather into strips, while Norman and Bill get on with gluing and trimming. Note the specially designed drying rack in the foreground, with several re-leathered units waiting to be trimmed.

Author: Richard Bunce

18-12-2021

The organ team have laboured mightily, and all 73 of the motors in the first windchest have been re-leathered. There will now be some small adjustments to make and then we can glue them back into the chest.

Then we can start on the next chest, which should go a lot quicker now that we know what we're doing.

Author: Richard Bunce

12-01-2022

Click the image to step through the pictures.

We reached an important milestone this week. The first windchest now has a complete set of re-leathered motors.

We had worried quite a lot about getting the motors back in as each one has to be located accurately in line with two wind passages in the chest. As it turned out, locating them wasn't too difficult, but we have used thicker felt than before on each "spoon" (the disc part of the valve) and also distorted some of the bronze wires while getting them in and out so there was quite a lot of corrective metal bending to do before the final gluing. The hard part of the job was kneeling down to put the motors in. And even harder getting up again afterwards.

Next we will do some electrical and pressure tests to make sure the valves open when they should, and seal when they are closed.

Author: Richard Bunce

15-03-2022

We have now tested the first chest with a test pipe using air pressure and activating the solenoids. Seventy-two of the notes are sounding correctly, and only one is not so that is a 99%, pretty good really. I hope we can fix the last one and declare the first chest finished this week. We have learned a lot about how to adjust the solenoids, and how to forestall some of the problems on the next one.

Author: Richard Bunce