Most of the summer was spent working on outdoor projects. Landscaping for my clients, painting my garage, tending the garden, and hosting my home brew group's annual Oktoberfest party took most of my time. However, after church choir rehearsals ended in May, I reserved Wednesday nights as "pipe organ night". My goal for the summer was to finish cleaning and rewiring the main manual chest, which I had started back in April.
First thing I did was remove all the old cotton covered wire. The existing wire was probably 'good enough' to use again, but it was becoming a bit frayed in places and I didn't want any short circuits, wrong notes, or ciphers. Plus, cotton wire isn't color coded, so tracing problems could easily become a nightmare. Using my soldering iron I separated the wire from the magnet wire and removed as much solder as possible from the magnet wire. I then began cleaning. I removed the exhaust port screw and armature from each magnet and used a toothbrush to clean the soot out of the port screws. The armatures had a bit of surface rust on them so I gently buffed the all-metal side with a Brillo pad and very gently brushed the soot off the paper side with the tooth brush. I used a shop-vac with an upholstery attachment to get dust and soot off the outside of the magnets. I also used the shop-vac and brush to very carefully clean dust, lint, and other debris off the pallets. Reassembling the exhaust ports and armatures was tricky. I centered the armature on its seat in the port, and holding the pouch board with the ports facing down, I carefully screwed the port back into the magnet. The armature must be perfectly seated in this step or it will not be able to move to the "closed" position and a cipher will result. The way these pouch boards are set up, repairing even one armature will be a pain in the butt so I had to get them all right the first time. As always, click on any of the pictures and you will see a whole album of related pictures.
With the old wire out of the way, I was ready to put the new wire in. But first, I made a few changes to the windchest. The most important is the cable now enters from the "C" side rather than the "C#" side. That makes for shorter wire runs. Using color-coded wire is great in the long run, but takes a bit of planning now. I found a color-code chart online and I don't know if it is industry standard, but it makes sense and as long as I have that chart, repairs will be much easier. I got the wires all laced and bundled, each colored wire beside its corresponding magnet. I cut it to length, stripped a bit of insulation, and soldered the two together.I built new chest bearers and attached them to the chest. I also cleaned the outer surface of the chest, removing masking tape residue, dirt, etc. and I vacuumed out the interior. I cleaned the toe holes with assorted brushes to remove any dust. There were also several holes in the windchest- both former wind inlets and screw holes- that needed to be patched. Now, laying on my back, I carefully lifted both pouch boards simultaneously into place using one hand, both knees, both toes and my chin. The free hand wielded a screwdriver which I used to replace the screws. Unfortunately (for you) I didn't set up my camera to take pictures of this balancing act! I nestled the cables into their grooves and replaced the bottom boards. Finally, I put a strip of painter's tape over the toe holes to prevent dust from floating down into them. All that remains to be done is attach an appropriate size flange to the wind inlet, but I will wait with that until I am ready to build the windlines.
