St. Paul's Angelica

Another few hours of attention today finds the bellows again feeding the Great and Swell organ in the 1887 Hamill. It is now capable of singing again. Sealing the wind feed to the pedal wind chest, and some critical adjustments, and she'll be ready to be given a good workout.

St. Cecilia has returned to her rightful place at St. Paul's.

A full 8 hour day of organ restoration on the 133 year old S.S. Hamill tracker organ. Today saw the painstaking task of re-installing the pedal wind chest, replacement of the repaired, reinforced, and renovated tracker rods that connect the foot pedals to the pedal wind chest pipe valves, re-installation of the 27 cleaned and repaired bass pipes, and re-installation of the freshly restored bellows assembly that serves as the reservoir of air for the entire instrument. Another full day of re-assembly of all the critical and incidental sub-assemblies to tie everything together, and it will be time for a test drive, and final adjustment.

Some additional photos of the bass pedal pipes for further documentation purposes.

Today saw a great start on repairing the pedal action of the tracker organ. All the trackers and bass pipes were removed, and the pedal windchest was removed so the entire windchest/valve assembly could be reworked. Pure physics and mechanical engineering at its finest. Annotated photos below. For reference, the pedal wind chest is approximately 11 feet long and perhaps 12" square. 27 pedal pipes are installed into it, and 27 trackers connect the valve action (which allows air through each pipe) to the pedals at the console. The pedal pipes are square wood pipes ranging in size and length (8' to 2' long).