There’s not much to see this week, but a lot of internal work is being done – such as all of the internal wiring and electric connections (there must be several miles of wiring inside the organ), the circuit testing, the wind trunking (which takes the wind from the two blowers to the two reservoir bellows, and then out to all the windchests), and the fitting of the rest of the Swell, Great and Pedal reed pipes.

Today the last of the swell shutters and the three access panels were delivered to church following their repair, cleaning and repainting at home, and there is a bit of late night work going on at the workshop in Burton on Trent to make some new wind trunking to take wind to the rear windchest.

My story (which I’m sticking to) is that it was too cold in the garage for the paint to harden off!

Today, Sunday, after Mass, I finished the last bit of painting on the Swellbox louvred doors and the Swell access panels.  Four of the swell doors from All Souls had split, so I have glued and screwed them together before applying the final paint.  Because these items undergo a lot of movement, they have been painted with exterior gloss paint – which is very hardwearing (it has to be – we have no plans to remove them for at least 25 years!).  This means that the dining table at home is no longer the resting place for drying paintwork!

I have also tried out a few more paint experiments on the display pipes – and I think we may be getting there! As we are having gold colouring on the tops of the organ case, I thought that it would be good if we could have the pipe mouth flats coloured gold to match.  I am quite pleased with the result.  The next moved, once the gold has hardened off is to paint the rest of each pipe and see how it all looks.  It’s a bit slow, as it takes about 18 hours for the gold to harden off before it can take masking tape and I can then spray the final metal paint coat.

So far, so good

When the casework was taken down we found a Cross lying under the Swellbox.  We now know that it was originally fitted to the middle of the top of the case, and when it was cleaned up we discovered that it had originally been coloured gold. We then looked at some of the decorative text and it became clear that some of the script has also been coloured gold. The colouring will be restored and the Cross returned to its original position on the case.

When I began removing the layers of old paint from the front display pipes I found that the pipes had originally been painted gold with some fairly poor quality paint. Today we cleaned up the display pipes and tested out the proposed silver/aluminium paint – but it didn’t really look too good, so I will have another look at that over the weekend.

The new bass pipes for the Swell 16′ Bassoon have been fitted into the Swellbox today and a lot of the intricate wiring for the control systems was done.  With around 2,000 tiny low voltage wires to strip and connect it was a fairly slow job, requiring a lot of care from Mike Thompson, but we got there with a couple of minutes to spare before Friday Evening Prayer started!

Work started today on rebuilding the casework and we spent further time on designing the changes to the console, which will be built into the front of the organ case. Further work will be done in the workshop tomorrow, and then the console framework will be brought to church on Friday for installation.  The front display pipes are also being worked on and we will be trying some paint tests on Friday. In addition to all of this, lots of wiring is being done, prior to the power being connected up, probably next week.

The casework has had layers of old wax and varnish removed using methylated spirits and lots of rubbing down.  They have now been polished up with button polish and, once they have been installed, they will be waxed for a fine finish. There’s still a long way to go, but we are definitely at the beginning of the end!

The Great pipework in place on its wind chest. The empty pipe racks in front are for the refurbished 8′ Trumpet and 4′ Clarion pipes from our old organ, which are on site awaiting fitting

Massive progress this week (thanks to Mike and the team).  We now have almost all the Great flue pipes in place, and all of the Swell pipe racks, together with both sets of bellows and much of the wind trunking.  In addition, the solid state dataplex output cards for the registration systems and action control software (made for us by Sonic Systems of Thetford in Norfolk) have all been fixed in place adjacent to where the console will be fitted, together with all the wiring. Most of the refurbished casework has also been brought back to Church, ready to be fitted, and the second blower unit has arrived.

Work has also been progressing at home, where the Swellbox doors and access panels have been repaired and repainting completed, ready for them all to be delivered to church next week.

At the workshop over the next few days some adjustments and painting are being carried out on the bottom octave of the Great 8′ Open Diapason and their wooden pipe supports are being treated with button polish.  In addition, work has now started on the rebuild of the console donated to us by St George’s, Whyke.

The Swellbox with all its sliders and pipe racks in place ready for the rest of the Swell pipes to be installed

The output boards for the computerised control systems fitted under the Swell windchest

Mike, Simon and Mat fitting out the Great wind chest

The whole of the 8′ Celeste is now in (at the back of the Swellbox)

More work has been done in Church, including finishing off the installation of the Swell 8″ Celeste stop, completing the Great pipework up to and including the Fifteenth and fitting the wind chests and support for the bottom pipes of the Great 8′ Open Diapason.  In addition, some of the refurbished casework has arrived from the workshop and the blower from St Johns, Bloxwich which will work in tandem with the blower from our old organ to provide the wind for the organ.

Most of the Great pipes are now installed

How tiny are these babies? The Great 2′ Fifteenth top octave

This will be the biggest week ‘on site’ at All Souls. The two sets of rising reservoir bellows have been remade and were today fitted into the organ under the Swellbox, and the small chest for the Swell 8′ Celeste stop has been fitted on to the back of the Swellbox.  The Great wind chest and pipe racks were finished last week in the workshop and were also installed today, together with a number of pipes from the 8′ Open Diapason, 8′ Flute and 4′ Octave.

The 8′ Celeste Pipes on their small wind chest inside the Swellbox

The Great Windchest and some of its pipes fitted into place in front of the Pedal pipes

This evening Mike Thompson and I finalised the drawstop layout and final designs for the console.  Over the next few days most of the wind trunking will be installed, together with the wind chests for the Great 8′ Trumpet and 4′ Clarion and the rest of the main pipework.  More news tomorrow…

Some of the Great pipework

Some of the Great wooden flute pies and metal Open Diapason Pipes -the bright metal bands at the top of the metal pipes are tuning sleeves which are moved up to lower the pitch or down to raise it