PRACTICE WITH HARALD BECKSTRØM, OSLO
SUBJECT: ORGAN RESTORATION - SOLVING REED AND AIR LEAKAGE PROBLEMS
JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2006

With the organ bellows repaired, it is time to put the organ back together and find out if the restoration process has been sucessful. I worked with Harald Beckstrøm at my studio to test the airflow and to tune the reeds.

PROBLEMS/SOLUTIONS:

1.While the bellows have been professionally repaired air is still leaking out causing the air pressure to be too low and giving very little volume, especially with the higher tones of the organ. Infact some of the higher tones are not heard at all.

SOLUTION: Cover this board with cotton felt so that uneven surface do not act as air vents.

img: the knife is lying on top of wooden board that the bellows are screwed onto and supports the sound module. (This is an image taken earlier in the process. The man with the screwdriver is my supervisor, Carle Lange, not Harald!)

Buy new screws for connecting the sound board to the wooden board that holds the bellows in place so it can be secured tightly.

2. When the organ was put back together and the stops pulled, several of the higher tones were heard even when they were not depressed.

SOLUTION: After much investigation into this problem we finally reached the conclusion that the stops bar was causing several of the upper keys to be derpessed.

img: stops bar

There are two wooden blocks that seemed to be superficial/aesthetic parts of the organ that are placed at each side of the keyboard.

img: you can see the postion of these black blocks in the top right hand side of this image.

However, we found two screws underneath these blocks and discovered that they were for adjusting the height of the stop bar, which rests on top of these blocks. By adjusting the screws, the stops bar was lifted slightly higher over the keys and the problem was solved!

3. A missing reed was replaced with a new one, found by Harald, but it did not fit into the appropriate slot.

SOLUTION: The metal needed to be shaved slightly to both fit into the slot and to give the correct tone.

4. Several of the reeds produced unclear tones.

SOLUTION: Cleaning the reeds helped to let the tongues vibrate and provided a better tone.

REMAING WORK ON ORGAN RESTORATION:

Fix point 1. Once this is fixed Harald will tune all the reeds to give the appropriate tones. Once this work is done I can continue to install the sensors.

 

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LINKS AND REFERENCES

REPAIRING AND MODIFYING THE PUMP ORGAN
ONGOING PROCESS

MEETING WITH HARALD BECKSTRØM 05 May 05

DELIVERING THE BELLOWS AT THE NORWEGIAN ORGAN WORKSHOP, SNERTINGDAL
08 OCTOBER 2005

 

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