16' Bourdon Chest Bearer

I am taking Mondays off work at the garden center for the next two months or so giving me some extra time to work on this project.  Yesterday was spent designing and building the 16' Bourdon chest bearers and the notched rack that holds the pipes upright.  The photo at right shows me attaching a brace to the pipe rack.  (As always, click on any photos to see them in Picasa, then click under "Belongs to" on the right hand side to see a whole album.)  All I had to work with was the chest itself, the pipes, and the rack.  Like the other offsets, this needs to be as close to the floor as possible, and even then the upper 4 pipes' mouths will be within 6" behind an adjacent manual windchest.  Not ideal, I know but I really don't have much option.  I had very few parts to work with when figuring out this layout.  That's good because I had the opportunity to design it just how I wanted, but bad because it took a lot of measuring back and forth to get everything just right.  Again, the basement ceilings are too low to set everything up so I took the time to measure twice, cut once and (hopefully) get it right.  Tonight I will be putting on a second coat of shellac.

I have also finished cleaning and rewiring the 16' offset.  The picture shows the freshly cleaned primary valves and exhaust ports.  This chest was different in that the magnets exhaust a primary valve which in turn exhausts the air under the leather pouch.  This arrangment results in a much quicker and more efficient operation of the larger pouches.  The secondary valve cover can be seen in the upper right corner.  These parts received a thorough vacuum cleaning.  The chest had been stored on its back and much dust, lint, and chunks of dirt had fallen in.  After reassembly I tested everything and the whole chest seems to work properly.  Although the basement ceilings are too low to set up the whole octave, I couldn't resist the temptation to dig out the low C pipe and attach it to it's toe hole with some flexible tubing.  The soft low rumble could be felt as much as heard!  That alone is reason enough to install real pipes in any setting!  It provides another dose of inspiration to keep me motivated!