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In my shop

Posted: Mon May 16, 2011 11:01 am
by LVRR2095
Here is a shot taken in my shop with an unusual project in hand.
On the table of the mill is an "offset chest" from the 1919 Wurlitzer Theatre Pipe Organ I am rebuilding and installing here at our home.
Keith

Re: In my shop

Posted: Mon May 16, 2011 1:37 pm
by Russ Hanscom
Sounds like an interesting project. How about a few more details when you have time?

Re: In my shop

Posted: Mon May 16, 2011 1:56 pm
by LVRR2095
Russ Hanscom wrote:Sounds like an interesting project. How about a few more details when you have time?
The organ is a 1919 Wurlitzer that was originally installed in the Strand Theatre in Lewiston, Maine. It was built to accompany silent movies and provide not only music, but sound effects too. It took two 28' rental trucks to drag home the pipe organ. There are two five horsepower Spencer turbine blowers to provide 450 cubic feet of air per minute each, to supply the wind to blow the pipes.
Here is a picture of the console in my work shop.
Keith

Re: In my shop

Posted: Mon May 16, 2011 2:00 pm
by LVRR2095
I forgot to mention my wife is planning a "Viking's Funeral" for me. She will set the organ ablaze and then throw my body on the funeral pyre. My fear is that she will not wait for my death before putting her plan into action!

Keith

Re: In my shop

Posted: Mon May 16, 2011 2:28 pm
by Harold_V
LVRR2095 wrote:I forgot to mention my wife is planning a "Viking's Funeral" for me. She will set the organ ablaze and then throw my body on the funeral pyre. My fear is that she will not wait for my death before putting her plan into action!

Keith
Hide the matches.

That's a cool project. It would be welcome in my home.

Harold

Re: In my shop

Posted: Mon May 16, 2011 4:23 pm
by alphawolf45
I would not want that myself but that is awesome.. It must have quite a set of pipes with it..Whats the back story on it, I guess you play? Need more pictures..

Re: In my shop

Posted: Mon May 16, 2011 5:20 pm
by steamin10
Back 'in the day' I worked in a body shop that had a theater stage and all the fancy plaster work still mostly intact. It was one street off Broadway in Gary, and was a show house when they were popular. Poking around in the attic, I found a number of wind boxes, but the brass and lead pipes were bashed off of them. I found parts of the wind mechanism, but most everything else was long gone. Now the building is gone, that was home to a car club, that rented the basement. In the 30's it had been a Dealership for Packard I think.

At any rate it caught my interest in organs and the work that keeps them running and in tune. All those guys are gone now, as I went a diferent path.

Neet piece and a beauty to see. There is no recording that will ever sound like one of those in a hall.

Re: In my shop

Posted: Mon May 16, 2011 5:37 pm
by LVRR2095
alphawolf45 wrote: I guess you play? Need more pictures..

Actually....I can't play a note! I enjoy working on pipe organs and automatic musical instruments. However, the Wurlitzer company made player units for these organs that played paper rolls similar to player pianos, only much more complex. The player organ rolls controlled playing the notes, registration changes (choosing which sets of pipes and effects are played) and full expression. Wurlitzer had the finest organists of the early Twentieth Century record for them, and most of these have been scanned to midi files. I will connect a midi interface to the electro-pneumatic relay of the organ and sit back and listen to the musicians of yore play the organ for me. The attached photo shows the crates filled with pipes in the building where I am installing the organ. The pipe will be housed in two chambers behind the wall you see. Those wooden shutters open progressively and let out increasingly more and more of the sound, thus controlling the volume of the organ.
Keith

Re: In my shop

Posted: Fri May 27, 2011 8:40 am
by woodcutter
I worked in a pipe organ shop for a year in Charlston SC, really interesting work, the ultimate in gizmology.Keep us updated with photos. Henry

Re: In my shop

Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 10:46 am
by NorrisM
That looks like a fun and ambitious project. How tall are the tallest pipes for that organ? And how many pipes does it have? I look forward to seeing the pictures of the build.

Re: In my shop

Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 12:19 pm
by LVRR2095
The longest pipes are mitered to fit under a 12' ceiling. In fact, while they are mitered, if straightened out, they would be sixteen feet long. There are just under 1,000 pipes in the organ, ranging in side from the size of a pencil to the 16' Diaphone pipes. The organ also has a set of cathedral chimes, a xylophone and glockenspiel, bass and snare drums and a complete set of sound effects to accompany silent movies. It took two trips with a 28' moving van to get all of this junk home.
I removed the organ from a barn in Harrison, Maine...where it had been stored for almost 40 years.
Keith
I've attached a picture of the organ in the barn, prior to removal. That is my VERY understanding wife standing alongside.

Re: In my shop

Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 9:15 pm
by Fullautomike
Now this is one cool project. Please keep posting pictures! :D I'd love to see that organ play in it's full glory!