Arp Schnitger is the famous North German pipe organ builder a couple
of centuries back (from whom I "stole" my byline !)

The story was told that he was having problems getting a good tone out
of a 32' stop in one of his organs he was building at the time.  He
happened to be on his way to the shop one morning when he heard this
tremendous deep rumbling noise coming from his workshop.

Rushing into the shop, he found several horrified assistants standing
around the fireplace hearth.  One of them had thrown wood shavings into
the fire in an effort to quickly heat up a batch of hide glue.  (Merci-
fully, "Titebond" hadn't been invented yet!)  The resulting flash fire
produced such a rush of wind escaping up the chimney that it began to
"speak" like a massive organ pipe!

Impressed by the solidity of this tone, the experiment was repeated
with the same satisfying result.  Schnitger then proceed to measure
the dimensions of the fireplace chimney and concluded that its cross-
section was several semitones lower in pitch than the lowest C pipe he
was having trouble to get to speak correctly.  They concluded from this
experiment that the problem was that the pipe walls were too thin and
were vibrating in sympathy with the air column inside the pipe, thereby
canceling out the effect of the air column.

They then proceeded to build a pipe with considerably more reinforce-
ment and discovered that this was "the trick" needed for good funda-
mental tone at such a low frequency.

I don't know who passed this "tale" down to us, but it certainly seems
to be a plausible one.  I can just picture this happening in my mind's
eye!

Faithfully, "Arp in the Corn Patch"

(NOW, you know where this comes from!!!)

Richard Schneider -- Schneider Pipe Organs, Inc., Organbuilders
41-43 Johnston St., P. O. Box 137, Kenney, IL  61749-0137
tel: 217-944-2454 , fax: 217-944-2527
http://www.schneiderpipeorgans.com/ Web Page URL

 [ MMDers Leonardo Perretti and John Liljencrants have experimented
 [ making organ pipes with paper walls.  Several layers of paper are
 [ rolled upon a mandrel, with a hard scaling wax (sealing wax) to
 [ add stiffness.  Without the wax no tone could be produced.  Arp
 [ Schnitger discovered the importance of pipe wall stiffness in
 [ the brick and mortar of the fireplace!  -- Robbie