Hello all,

I may only be stating what everyone already knows but here goes.

Recently, after a near ill-fated attempt to clean and polish the brass
pipes on my calliope, I discovered that the polishing compound had
gotten into the small opening around the insert at the bottom of the
pipes.  When I had put the pipes back in place and tried to play it, I
almost had a heart attack from the sound, and I had a job to play in
two days.

Dave Miner, Miner Manufacturing, told me to flatten a piece of
stainless steel wire and run it around the opening, being careful not
to move the "plug" which causes the air to be evenly distributed into
the tuned pipe.  I had no access to SS wire and I looked around for
something else.  A plastic vacuum molded cover for electrical
connectors caught my eye.  I cut it to a sharp "V" with enough to hold
on to and ran it around the opening.  Not only did it clean out the
dried polish but brought up an unbelievable amount of other dirt that
had collected over the fourteen years since it was build.

I didn't know if it would ever sound good again, but, was I happily
surprised, it sounded better than it had before the ill-fated cleaning
attempt.  Others, with this type of pipes might try this.  The plastic
had to be replaced 7 or 8 times to get all 43 pipes, but the plastic
is flexible enough not to harm the delicate air passages.

I am sure that there are many different sources for a firm but flexible
plastic other than from where I got mine.

I had thought that mine was needing a tuning, prior to the cleaning,
but not now.

Hope this helps someone,
Dean Smith
deantsmith@altavista.com.geentroep [ drop .geentroep to reply ]