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The Oregon Chord
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3/25 Kimball Refurb
and Maintenance Log
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Main II Regulator rebuild - 2007
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The main II regulator was badly in need of repair, as the
leather was old and rotten, and the gussets were blowing out. In July 2007, the
regulator was removed and refurbished by Rob Kingdom. Because of the condition
of the wood pieces, some had to be replaced. All the leather and felt was
replaced with new.
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Blown out gussets and rotten leather
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New wooden parts on left ready to use
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Underside of completed regulator. The bottom plate is
all new as the old one had too many unused holes sealed with silicone gel to be
really viable.
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Completed Regulator, ready to install. Of
the three top plates, the nearest two were made new as the condition of the old
wood was not good.
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Main and Solo Percussion Equalizers ("winkers") - June/July 2008
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The percussions in the Main and Solo chambers were not winded properly and
didn't
play correctly. New winkers have been added in the Main, as well as new winding to make them play right. A Wurlitzer
winker was generously donated but needed a lot of work, as it was in a fire. It
got a new top plate, battens and spring retainer. A new, additional replica was
made from surplus materials. Both the Main chamber Harp and Chrysoglott
percussion sets play very well now they aren't starved for wind. The Harp has a
new 4" line, feeding a custom built wooden manifold attached to the side of
the Harp. The Chrysoglott line is 4" and tee's to 3" for the
Chrysoglott and the traps that are installed above the Marimba/Harp.
In the course of this task, we learned that both the
Marimba/Harp and the Chrysoglott have primary, secondary, and tertiary
pneumatics! Three pneumatics per note. Many of the traps action have the same
configuration as well, which makes them very fast and responsive.
Also during the course of this re-winding job, every effort
was made to recycle materials. No new PVC pipe was purchased, only a few
fittings. The wood used for the replica winker was surplus from previous
projects and the wood for the Marimba/harp manifold was recycled from 90 year
old theatre pipe organs. A very "Green" project!
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Winkers before final finish and covering - the replica is the
top one. All materials are recycled.
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The rebuilt Wurlitzer "Winker" (upper
left) in its
new home, supplying air to the Harp at about 14" pressure. The lower right is a replica built by Rob Kingdom, supplying the Chrysoglott and
traps at 13.5" pressure. The inlet to the winkers are mounted directly
to the wind trunk.
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Preparing the Marimba/Harp for the new wooden manifold. This
required scraping and sanding off the silicone gel used for sealing the original
flanges. The use of Silicone gel as a sealant is to be discouraged.
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Pre-fitting the new Chrysoglott winker onto
the wind trunk. Mounting the inlet directly to the wind trunk saves space and a
couple of flanges and fittings. Notice that the technicians fingers never leave his hands.
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Traps rebuild - August 2008
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One of the Sleigh Bells actions after refurbishing by Mike
Bryant. It just doesn't get any better than this!
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The pneumatic motor has been recovered and
the wood pieces are re-finished. Notice even the metal hinges and springs have
been cleaned and polished.
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The completed Surf/Aeroplane effect unit. The top portion is
the Surf effect, the bottom is the Aeroplane effect. Again, superb workmanship
from Mike Bryant.
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The Surf effect has a movable brass plate that slides forth
and back to simulate surf.
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Completed Persian Cymbal Unit
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The Persian Cymbal has a large motor for a
Gong effect and two smaller motors for the Persian cymbal roll.
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Review of the 2008 Summers' activities at the
Cleveland
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Both the
Marimba Harp and
Chrysoglott have now been rewinded and the difference in performance is
striking (no pun intended). Although we have not had a chance
to play them from the console yet, testing in the chamber demonstrates
that you can now play repeating chords and all
the notes will play. Volume
and response seem to be orders of magnitude better. We’ll have a
little regulation to do once we hook the console back up. Rob
Kingdom, Jack Powers (picture on upper left below), Jerry
Hertel and Mike Bryant (The "winding
wizard" pictured lower right below) finished the
installation of the winkers and associated rewinding last Friday (07/23).
The new "winkers" are shown in picture on upper right below.
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Mike
finished releathering the
four blown Chrysoglott
pneumatics, and Rob reinstalled them. All notes
now play. The Harp has one dead note
that needs troubleshooting and correcting.
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All of
the traps and toy counters have been removed from the Main chamber and
taken off site for repair and rebuilding.
Jack Powers and Bob MacNeur assisted Rob in the
removal. Mike has begun work on some
pieces, and Rob has the remainder. Current plans call for some of
the traps to be moved to the Solo chamber, where they can be mounted on a
wall close to the shutters. This will enable them to be
heard much better than the old layout. Refurbishment of the Sleigh Bells
actions, Bird Whistle and Acme siren are in progress as of this date. We
can look forward to stereo Bird Whistles, one in each chamber.
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Some of
the traps show signs of having been rebuilt in the past. While much
of the work appears to have been quite well done, once installation began
things went downhill. Silicone sealant or something like it (also known as “organ
builder in a tube”) was used instead of the
correct gasket or sealing material.
This will all need to be cleaned off, and the wooden pieces refinished.
Getting the sealant off without ruining the piece is a tough job and this
turns a five minute job into a five day job. There will be opportunities
for those who are so inclined to visit Mike’s house and help with the
preparation and refurbishment. Contact Mike directly (mbryant3@earthlink.net
or (206) 619-6645). By the way, the sealant gel shouldn't be confused with
the Butyl o-rings used to seal the wind lines. The o-rings work out quite
well and save a lot of time.
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Several
of the traps were not usable simply
because no control for
them existed on the console. Mike is working to
come up with a solution so that all devices can be used when they are
reinstalled.
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The Main
Harmonic Tuba pressure has been raised to 15" from about 11".
This should make the Tuba a little more assertive. Of course, it will
require retuning. The 16' octave extension of this rank, the 16' Bombarde,
still has problems. We believe it is a Robert Morton set with wooden
resonators and should be speaking on 15" of pressure. It currently is
on 10" and most notes just don't want to speak, sometimes at all. A
separate regulator has been acquired and will be rebuilt and installed.
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Many
major and some minor wind leaks have been fixed in the Main chamber. The
noise in the Main chamber was much louder than the Solo chamber. It now
seems as the Main is quieter the the Solo!
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The Main
Tibia Clausa tremulant unit has been exchanged for a little larger one and
installed in a different location (see picture lower left below). You may have noticed in the past that
there was a huge difference in volume and tremulant operation
between the Tibias in the Main and Solo chambers.
This was caused by the pressure for the main
Tibia being way too low, and
the tremulant was the wrong size (it was a size
appropriate for a Vox Humana, which doesn’t need to
move nearly as much air through). We have
installed heavier springs to bring the pressure up
to where it should be, and Jonas Nordwall has
provided us a mo' betta tremulant unit in
exchange for the small one. Preliminary audition of the new tremulant sounds
just great, it really wails! And after replacing a dead magnet, there are
no dead notes in the Main Tibia!
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Main Tibia
Clausa pipes have had all the stoppers repacked and rough tuned.
With these stoppers corrected and the rank
re-regulated, the rank should just sing.
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08/13/08
- Clayton
and Rick Parks (Elsinore Theatre) stopped by Wednesday 8/13/08 to donate a
Kimball Winker and dice box for future use. While they were here, they
assisted with tuning the metal Diaphones in the Solo Chamber. Many of the
pipes were way sharp and one had some trouble with slow speech. With the
expertise of Clayton and Rick, all notes play, are in tune and speak
properly. Many, Many thanks to Clayton and Rick.
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08/25/08
Mike
Bryant has refurbished the Sleigh bells and Surf/Aeroplane actions and
they look just
like or even maybe better than new. See pix above.
Fall 2008
Log Entries
09/03/08 - Because we
were able to play the instrument from the console yesterday, we made
the following observations:
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The main Tibia Clausa with the new
tremulant is fabulous. What a sound!
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The Marimba/Harp is plenty loud and
now very useful
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The Chrysoglott is much improved
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The Main chamber noise is
significantly lower and is less than the Solo
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With the III rank Mixture stop and
wind chest removed, the Main chamber sound seems much more
present. The Mixture was blocking some egress of the sound. The
Mixture has been removed for long term refurbishing and
relocation. (very, very long term refurb and relocation will
probably be somewhere in the Portland metro area)
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The Main Tibia Clausa needs some
regulation work to knock the rough edges off.
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The way the wind chests are installed
with the walk boards over the chest, serious tuning and regulation
work on the some of the reeds is shear Chinese water torture.
Some rackbaord holes for the Orchestral Oboe are too small and the
pipes don't seat correctly on the chest. Correcting this will be
painful because of the location.
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The Chrysoglott has one blown
pneumatic motor and both the harp and Chrys need regulation work
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The Main trumpet is a piece of ca-ca
and needs a lot of work.
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Many rackboard
holes for the whistles (upper work) are way oversize. This
results in making it extremely difficult to tune if the pitch has to
be lowered. You are trying to tap the collar up, and instead
of moving, the pipe just lifts up out of the hole. Because the
pipe sits (in some cases) directly under the walk board, you really
can’t hold on to the pipe and tune it at the same time. So
the technique is to pull the pipe, pull the collar way flat, then
try to locate the hole in the chest by feel, and then tune it.
These holes need to be reamed out to a size where they can be lined
with felt that will grip the pipe.
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If the Chrysoglott
continues to show up blown power pneumatics, it should probably be
rebuilt completely. If that leather is going bad, the internal
leather can’t be too far behind. And a rebuild is not
something that can really be done in place.
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The harp does need
quite a bit of regulation. At present it’s pretty
clunky. It appears that attempts were made (unsuccessfully) to
regulate it into playing correctly when the real problem was
winding. So we need to undo that, and it should sound
great. That’s an easy fix.
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09/06/08 - Observations from the First
Friday event: The organ sounds much better overall. The Main Harmonic
Tuba tuning is not stable and will probably have to lower the pressure
to about 12" to improve it. 09/21/08
- Mike Bryant has completed refurbishing the Chinese Gong/ Persian
Cymbal action. See pictures above. Work continues on the Marr &
Colton regulator for the 16' Robert-Morton Bombarde offset chest. Word
from John Ledwon through Rick Parks is that the Bombarde should be on
15" wind pressure and if it is a later set, it should be on
20".
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The following were generously donated
by Don Galarneau:
Overall, the improvements and repairs are significant and will
improve the quality of this great instrument quite a bit. And, the quality of
the workmanship is world class! Many thanks to those who were able to
participate.
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© 2008 0708 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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