Organ Building for Amateurs

Book excerpt: Organ Building for Amateurs--a practical guide for home-workers containing specifications, designs, and full instructions for making every portion of the instrument with over two hundred illustrations and explanatory diagrams By Mark Wicks Contents I-Tools and Appliances--Specifications--New Method of Making Pipes II-Wood Pipes III-Pipes of Metal-casting Bench and Casting Box--Metal for Pipes--Melting Metal--Necessary Tools--Scale for Cutting Metal for Pipes--Formation of Sheet Metal into Pipes IV-Reed Pipes V-Sound-board, Wind-chest, Pallets, etc. VI-The Bellows VII-The Building Frame and Manual Action VIII-The Key-board IX-The Stop Action and Couplers X-The Pedal Organ: Sound-board, and Pedal key-board XI-Pedal Action: Coupler Great to Pedals XII-The Swell, etc.--Venetian Swell--Gridiron Swell--Box Swell--Tremulant XIII-Voicing and Toning--Defects and Their Remedies XIV-Tuning XV-The Case--Pipe Decorations XVI-Defects Generally--List of Stops and Their Combinations--Additional Specifications Preface In submitting this little work to the public I must, in the first instance, warn the reader that it is not written with the intention ofdealing exhaustively with organ building generally, but, as its title implies, only with that particular phase which comes within the means and scope of an intelligent amateur workman. Therefore, such refinements as electric and pneumatic actions, not being required in small instruments, find no place in this work, but everything of interest to a home-worker is touched upon in a thoroughly practical manner. There are many works on the subject to which builders, purchasers, or general readers may resort for information respecting organs, but the instructions contained in most of these works being limited to general, and often vague, description, are of little service to an ordinary amateur desirous of building the instrument himself, as in most cases the idea of building an organ at home is taken up by persons having little knowledge of the construction of the instrument which they so ardently desire to possess. It is indeed rather surprising that there is not a larger supply of literature dealing with this subject from an amateur's point of view, for it is a matter which is constantly claiming the attention young men of mechanical proclivities, and also one which exercises an astonishing and peculiar fascination over them. But beyond isolated papers in magazines, and the little manual, there does not appear to be anything which can rightly be considered as meeting the requirements of person of the class referred to. It is with the... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Windham Press is committed to bringing the lost cultural heritage of ages past into the 21st century through high-quality reproductions of original, classic printed works at affordable prices. This book has been carefully crafted to utilize the original images of antique books rather than error-prone OCR text. This also preserves the work of the original typesetters of these classics, unknown craftsmen who laid out the text, often by hand, of each and every page you will read. Their subtle art involving judgment and interaction with the text is in many ways superior and more human than the mechanical methods utilized today, and gave each book a unique, hand-crafted feel in its text that connected the reader organically to the art of bindery and book-making. We think these benefits are worth the occasional imperfection resulting from the age of these books at the time of scanning, and their vintage feel provides a connection to the past that goes beyond the mere words of the text.