Pedal Refurbishment

The pedal board needed some serious work to get it back into shape.  Two of the keys were broken and needed to be replaced.  The weight of touch was different on all the keys.  They were rather sloppy and noisy.  Plus, the whole thing was filthy!  I removed all the panels for refinishing, so this was the logical time to do the pedal board as well.  Each pedal is attached at the heel end by a spring.  The spring returns the key as you lift your foot.  They aren't attached at the toe end, they just sit between the guide pins.  

I labeled each key as I removed it and then labeled and removed the return spring.  The black sharps are plastic which I removed and cleaned.  I then removed the maple natural covers to refinish them separately.  Everything was stripped and sanded along with the other parts of the console.  I also replaced the two broken keys. I used clear poplar to cut identical replacements.  I used the aniline dye left over from the stop tab rail to color them to almost perfectly match the originals.  Can you spot the replacement in this photo?

I wanted to refinish the pedals with water-based satin polyurethane (WB) for two reasons.  It is non-yellowing, preserving the light color of the maple covers and it is almost as durable as oil-based polyurethane.  WB dries very quickly, so you have to work fast.  The keys themselves finished beautifully.  When I went to apply it to the natural covers, I ran into a problem.  By the time I got to the fifth key, I noticed that the WB on first key had crackled, lifted, and literally fell off the wood.  I know I cleaned them up very well after stripping.  I have no idea what went wrong.  Rather than struggle with the old covers, I decided to make brand new covers.  I went to Hardwood Heaven and picked out some hard maple boards and a couple new router bits.  It took an afternoon of milling, routing, and sanding, but at least I was confident the WB would stick.  And it did.  I applied four coats, sanding lightly between coats to remove dust nibs. 

While the WB cured, I turned to the loose noisy keys.  The guide pin bushing felt was badly worn on most of the loose keys so I replaced all that with new felt.  A few keys needed a shim under the felt too.  I suppose after 80 years the wooden guide pins got worn a bit wider too.  After the WB cured, I reassembled everything.  I also adjusted the spring tension to just under 3 pounds of resistance which is the AGO specification.  The keys are now much quiter and play with the resistance I would expect.  See lots more pictures in the album, the link is below this picture.

Pedal Board Album

Swell Shoes Repaired

Some former organist really liked to use the swell.  You can clearly see where her heel and toe wore through the tread on the shoe (I know it was a she-  I found her name on a note wedged between two panels down inside the console).  The aluminum tread is also worn through there and needs to be replaced.  I found some vinyl tread at the hardware store, but the aluminum trim was another matter.  After checking several sheet metal suppliers, I ended up at Guenzel Sheet Metal.  They had aluminum of the exact thickness I needed and a metal break to form the rolled-over edge for me.  They were very gracious helping me with this small project shortly before closing time on a Friday!  Many thanks to them!

When I got home I removed the old trim and scraped the old tread off both shoes with a putty knife.  It took quite a bit of sanding to remove the old adhesive.  Fortunately the wear patterns didn't cut too deeply into the wood.  I cut the new tread to fit and glued it in place.  Then I used tin snips and a Dremel to cut the miters in the trim.  Also at this time I removed all the old wiring in the register crescendo.  It cleaned up pretty nice- good as new!



Swell Shoe Repair Album

Console Staining and Varnishing Complete

Now that the console was ready, I had to decide what type of stain to use.  Most paint store stains are pigment based.  Finely ground clay of various colors is suspended in an extremely thin varnish.  When applied, the pigment settles primarily in the pores, but not so much in the denser wood.  I don't especially care for that look.  Analine wood dye solves that problem.  It colors the pores and dense wood more evenly.  I decided to use a combination of two dyes from W.D. Lockwood in New York.  Both are a medium brown, but one (Seal Brown) is a bit more red and the other (Flemish Brown Oak) is more gray.  The wood in the 80-year old oak console is more pink than the new oak I used for the swell box and other panels.  Plus, you will notice that some of the boards within the console are very different colors.  The photo above shows that pretty well- the far left is darker than the center top (unstained).The center bottom is newly stained.  The piece to the right is a scrap left over from the swell box.  I was able to blend the two stains to get pretty even coloring between all the parts.  The picture below shows the console after staining.

For the varnish, I decided to use an old-fashioned alkyd varnish with a satin finish.  It is much clearer than polyurethane, which can get cloudy and obscure the wood grain.  Plus, I don't really need the added durability of polyurethane.  Although I am not striving to do a period restoration, alkyd is what was most likely used on the console originally.  My first coat was thinned by half with mineral spirits to serve as a 'sealer coat'.  The next four coats were thinned by about 25% to achieve a faster build.  Thinning also allowed me to apply the varnish with a rag.  I was able to really rub the varnish into the pores and wipe off the excess as I went.  This caused the pores to become partially filled without rounding over.  It looks much like an old-fashioned hand-rubbed oil finish.  The only problem was that the varnish would become tacky before I could completely coat the larger pieces, leaving some rag tracks.  I sanded lightly between coats and before the topcoat to remove any dust nibs.  The top coat was thinned by about 60% to slow the drying time and leave a very uniform sheen.  I had to work rather fast applying the varnish, so I didn't take time to set up the camera.

I still need to apply furniture paste wax to even out the sheen and give it a little more scratch resistance, but there isn't any hurry getting that done.

Console Staining Album