Since I mentioned the pipes from that really ancient barrel organ in
my note about the organ barrel reader, I thought I'd also send a couple
pictures of the pipes themselves.  I will send two pictures for posting
-- before and after.

You can see that these pipes were in a bad way.  Many had dings and
broken feet, on others the top was peeled open in an attempt at tuning
many years ago.  There were two missing and two with only the foot
present.

I have made and repaired many wooden pipes over the years but I know
when to go to an expert rather than bugger up something of quality.  So,
lacking experience (and materials and knowledge), I decided to ask Dennis
Unks from Organ Supply Industries (OSI) to restore these metal pipes
while I concentrated on fixing the wooden ones.  By the way, this 20-key
organ had 40 wooden pipes and 51 metal pipes (and it plays 15 tunes).

As you can see from the second picture, OSI made the required replacement
pipe and restored the others to their original un-dinged and un-split
state.  The restored pipes are the ones in the front row in the before
picture.  Note that they had to remove the top from the stopped pipes
and then remove the dents, and then the tops were resoldered.  Even the
metal appears to be the same.

They use the same procedure and tools as shown in Dom Bedos' book on
organ construction; I recognized the setup immediately.  They even age
the metal before they use it.  What a great job.  Although it wasn't
cheap by any means, the price was very reasonable for all the work
involved.  They even used my confirmed tuning and the pressure I measured
to voice the pipes for me.  Now all I have to do is finish restoring
the rest of the organ.

Regards
Craig Smith
Upstate New York, USA