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Saturday, October 24, 2015

Repair of Warren Dick pump organ #14

I was commissioned by one of my mini club members to repair a W. Dick pump organ she had accidentally dropped, breaking off some of the castellation at the top and knocking the upper front pieces off.




I decided that in order to do an adequate repair on a piece by a noted artisan I needed to replace the entire top castellations.  Attempts to replace just the broken off bits proved unsatisfactory to me.

First I removed the upper pieces.



After setting up my Microlux 1/2 inch shaft table saw with a stack of slitting blades equal to the cuts in the original, I slotted up a couple of feet of mahogany while getting the spacing right.




This has led to a decision to create a micro screw adjustable auxilary fence for this kind of finger joint cut.  At any rate I eventually achieved the cut spacing I was looking for.

Once the mahogany pieces were cut I sanded them thru grits to 2000, cut them to length and stained them with Danish walnut I glued them into place and waxed with carnuba.  The organ front was reglued with the keyboard cover set loosly in place and functional.




The owner was pleased enough with the repair to offer me another piece for repair.  I will see it in November.

In other mini related news I visited a luthier friend, Michael Colbert and he resawed a few antique oak dresser drawer sides for a revisit of the oak rolltop desk project.  The organ owner was kind enough to loan me her R. Mason build of Jim Dorsett's Harmonious Confusion roll top desk.  I have the original plans from Scale Cabinet maker and now have the oak rough thicknessed.

Stay tuned,

gg