Organ Update - September 2022

This past month, the remainder of the cables running into the chamber have been terminated on the relay boards. The only things left to wire up would be the offset chests and some percussions / traps. That took quite a bit longer than anticipated. I’d like to recognize Steve Hansen for serving as inspiration for how those boards were wired.

In other news, all of the chime tubes were polished with “0000” steel wool. It is amazing how they came back to life with some muscle. Originally, they would have been hung on their action with wax covered string. As we have seen in other installations after many years of hanging, the string breaks, chime tube drops and oftentimes crack when they hit the floor. To try and avoid this from happening, I cut out the original strings and replaced it with aircraft cable. Ferrals were crimped on and hidden inside the chime tubes. At the time of writing, all of the tubes are now hung.

The rest of the insulation has now been installed in the blower room walls and thanks to Tim Lethlean, there is now a 24v clock with a stepper motor in it that connects to the simplex system in the wall (why not?). There is also an opening roughed in for the air inlet.

Upstairs, there has been some progress with chasing out some bugs with a couple of SAMs. The issue is related to magnetic cross-talk between SAMs. Given how close they are installed to each other, the little reed switches sometimes pick up magnetic fields from neighboring switches, which cause things to stay on when they should be off or not turn on when they should. Of course, one of the problems was the 8’ Post Horn in the pedal not canceling. I am happy to report that building and installing little sheet metal shields has solved the issues. Tape was applied to these shields to prevent shorting between components.