Practical Organ Building

by W. E. Dickson

ORGAN-BUILDING.

CHAPTER I.

PLANT AND MATERIALS.

We shall assume at once, and at the very outset, that our reader has the fixed purpose of producing an organ which shall be creditable to its builder, a source of pleasure to its players and their hearers, and an ornament to the room or building in which it is erected: in short, that he remembers the excellent maxim, "whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well," and will not be content with rough workmanship, inferior materials, and inharmonious results.

Assuming this as the basis and principle of all our suggestions, we shall nevertheless bear in mind the necessity of adapting our rules to the conditions imposed by slender purses, and the imperfect appliances of humble workshops. Without attempting to quote the actual market prices of the wood, leather, and metal required, or of those important parts of the instrument which in most cases will be purchased ready-made, we shall endeavour to show how economy may be consulted by obtaining all these gradually, as our work advances with that inevitably slow progress which attends all proceedings in which most haste is found to be worse speed.

We shall buy nothing which we can make for ourselves. The common sense of our readers may be trusted not to press the application of this rule to a reductio ad absurdum. As we shall certainly buy, and not make, our screws and nails, so in the course of the following pages we may possibly recommend the buying of certain parts of the work, in full remembrance of our rule. But even in these occasional instances we shall probably point out how expenditure may be saved by patient industry. We need not anticipate. Our readers will see for themselves what we mean as we go on.

Our task will be somewhat simplified if we suppose that an organ is desired for a room of moderate size. Such an instrument will commonly have one manual, or row of keys, with four or five stops, or sets of pipes. Pedals, with or without pipes of their own of deep bass quality, must be considered essential in every organ making any pretension to completeness, or intended to afford useful practice for learners. Taking this as a rough outline or sketch of probable plans, it will be easy to see hereafter how they may be indefinitely extended.

Our organ factory, then (with some such plan in our head), must be a roomy, well-lighted, perfectly dry workshop, furnished with a fire-place or stove for the glue-pot, with drawers or cupboards for storing away skins of leather and other materials not in constant requirement, and with shelves on which pipes may be stowed without danger of rolling off. It must not be a mere shed or hovel in which we might mend the cart or the wheel-barrow, and it should not be far from our dwelling-house, if we are likely to work at our serious undertaking in the winter evenings.

The shop must be fitted with a full-sized bench in good condition, that is to say, with its top dressed truly, and not hacked by rough usage; and good workmanship will be much promoted if the usual appliances of such a bench are of the best kind and in complete order. True planing, so vitally essential in organ-building, cannot be done upon a crazy or worn-out bench. The bench should stand near a window, and it should be so placed that boards much longer than itself may be occasionally dressed upon it by temporary arrangements.