My first big tear-down

[vaneramos]

Organs are aptly named. On the inside a pipe organ looks like guts. We spent Monday and Tuesday eviscerating a small country church in Chesley, a 90 minute drive north from here. All the parts have been carted down to Les's shop in Fergus, mostly by horse trailer. Over the next few weeks, the electrical controls will be completely replaced, along with some valves and other small mechanisms. Then we'll take everything back to Chesley and reinstall it. I spent yesterday morning crawling around the space beneath the floor of the organ, pulling out old wiring and wind pipes. I emerged covered from head to foot in black dust. Then there was a lot of heavy grunt work: carrying, loading, and unloading two hours later.

Today was relatively light: John and I cleaned pipes and wind boxes, while Les began tinkering, and taking things apart. That will become the rhythm of our usual days.

Organ pipes are arranged in ranks, each using different constructions and mechanisms to produce distinctive sounds. An organ typically contains a wide variety of pipes. From the console the organist uses stop controls to determine which pipes, or combinations of pipes, are activated by the keyboards (called manuals) and pedals. Large church organs commonly have thousands of pipes. The world's largest operational pipe organ, the Wanamaker Grand Court Organ in Philadelphia, has 28,482 pipes in 461 ranks. The small organ from Chesley has about a dozen ranks. The other organ we will build in Dundas this year will eventually have about 30.

These handsome little wood pipes are called flutes d'amour. They are made mostly of pine; the second wood is probably cherry. The other pipes, made of cast zinc, are from the diapason, the most important set of pipes in most organs, providing the distinctive, foundational sound.