Reflections of a Canadian Churchman

 After we stripped the cloth off the reservoir and exhausters, we sanded them down so that they were nice and clean with no glue or material residue remaining   The bellows had been recovered in 1905 and the restorer had left a penciled note on the inside of the reservoir.  The exhausters, however, were original. They were "harmonium style", that is, with large ribs with leather hinges and leather gussets. The conventional wisdom as that novices like us should not attempt to recreate these on the first go-around.  We decided we would just recover the exhausters using bellows cloth (more on that, below).   We cleaned off the old ribs and sanded them down so that we could use them again in the exhausters. We then set them aside while we moved to work on the main reservoir. We rehinged the bellows board to the movable reservoir board (for some reason I didn't take any photos of that) and then while waiting for the hing...

A while back, I had the opportunity to work on cleaning the keyboard.  There are a few front ivories that are missing and the keys are very dirty and yellow.  You can also see some of the red felt stains on the treble end of the keyboard that was caused by water being spilled on the keyboard at sometime in its past.  I removed the mount upon which the stop levers are located and this allows for the removal of each key for cleaning.    On the underside of the stop mount, the number 307 was written in pencil.  Is this the part number for this stop action?  I found 303 written in several other places on the organ. I know that M and H used "300" numbers as style numbers for some of their organs.  There is still no overt sign of a serial number or style number. A few more pencil markings were found on the keys: "#49" The letter "H" I gently sanded the sides of the keys to remove any finger gunk.  I then used warm water ...

The Octave Coupler: The octave coupler is an interesting mechanical device that allows you to play two notes, an octave apart, while playing only the lower of the two keys.  The device is engaged when the "octave coupler" stop knob is pulled, engaging a linkage that is attached to a rod underneath the coupler system which slightly elevates the coupler bed so that an angle rod (the coupler rod) can activate the corresponding key an octave higher.   It is a great place for collecting dust and bits of debris, including this missing stop face!  Clearly, too much dirt and debris will affect the way the coupler mechanism works.  After retrieving that Melodia stop face and vacuuming the coupler, we dismantled the entire mechanism to get an idea how it works and what needed to be done to return it to its original functionality. The mechanism has a couple of strips of wood to hold it in place, as well as felt in several places that keep the co...