Practical Organ Building

by W. E. Dickson

Remark.—All this is quite independent of, and preliminary to, the arrangements for admitting the supply of air to the channels themselves.

3. Having already made our Stopped Diapason pipes, let us range them on a table or floor, and consider well how they must be planted on a sound-board such as we are about to make for our organ, be it broad and shallow, or narrow and deep, be it low or lofty.

Remark.—No other stop will practically take up so much room on the sound-board as the Stopped Diapason; hence, if we plot the board with reference to it, all the other pipes will be easily worked in.

Fig. 5.

4. On the opposite page several different plantations of the Stopped Diapason are shown both in elevation and in plan. In Fig. 5 the pipes, planted in a double row throughout, are placed alternately to the right and to the left, meeting in the middle at the smallest pipe. The exact reverse of this plantation, namely, placing the largest pipes in the middle, and sloping down to the smallest pipes at each end, can be easily imagined, and it is unnecessary to figure it. It is clear that in both these plantations the large pipes occupy a space, as regards depth, out of proportion to the space occupied by the upper part of the stop. Fig. 6 shows a very common plantation of pipes, which, as we shall see hereafter, allows us to simplify the internal mechanism or action. Fig. 7, in plan only, shows a mode of economising space as regards depth by planting the pipes of the lower octave in a single row, resuming the double row at Tenor C. This plantation would suit a wide and shallow organ. Figs. 8 and 9 show different methods of planting the large pipes in order to avoid a disproportionate sacrifice of space on the board. It will be seen at a glance that they can be ranged behind the pipes of the tenor and treble octaves, or carried off to the right and left in rows standing at right angles to them. Fig. 10, in elevation only, shows how we may build an organ under the ceiling of a very low room, by planting the eight feet octave on a board of its own at a lower level than that of the sound-board proper. And it is easy to conceive, without a figure, that this accessory board may be replaced by two boards, to right and left, resulting in a plan resembling that in Fig. 9, but giving a lower level to the tall pipes.

Fig. 6.

Fig. 7.