Metalworking in the Purest Form

[TomG]

I came across the Facebook page for a pipe organ builder in the U.K. called Shires Organ Pipes Ltd. and was blown away by the amount of information, photos and videos they provided on hand making pipe organs. They cast the sheet for the pipes out of 80/20 tin/lead alloy, hammer them to eliminate the porosity, hand plane and scrape them to thickness, then roll them into tubes, solder the seam and construct the languid, mouth and foot before soldering that all together. The guy doing all of this work on the videos makes it look easy, but I can only imaging how difficult it must be to solder together something that has nearly the same melting point as the solder being used to join it.

If you click on the photos, it opens them full size and you can step through them (there are hundreds).

Tom

Shires Organ Pipes

[awemawson]

Gosh Tom thanks for sharing that - fascinating to watch. Amazing skill making beautiful yet functional items with very little in the way of sophisticated equipment.

That's another 30 mins lost to posterity :)

[TomG]

It's pretty much form follows function with the exception of some of the pipes having a faceted design on them, also formed by hand.

Tom

[hermetic]

they give the address as Leeds, but actually it is in Stanningley, 2.5 miles from where I was born in Pudsey.
Super link, fascinating stuff!
Phil

[awemawson]

I know Stanningley and Pudsey having been born in Leeds rather a long time ago !

By co-incidence I also know three of the organs that they were making pipes for !!!!

(There used to be the most amazing Govt surplus shop in Pudsey in the dip between Leeds & Bradford - when I was a youngster I got all sorts of things to play with - lenses prisms, WW1 black out candle lamps (slit on front) - best of all, when I was recovering having put my eye out as a 5 year old, father (who who's office was in Bradford) brought me home a 'play tent' made from WW2 parachute silk. It survived long enough for my kids to play in it and it was bought in 1954 !!!! )

[EdK]

You've got wonder how much longer they'll be made that way. I'm guessing not a lot of kids would choose that as a profession so it'll probably fade into a lost art.

Thanks for posting the link Tom. Fascinating to look at all of those pictures.

Ed

[Dr Stan]

When I lived in Kearney Nebraska the approximately 150 year old organ at St Luke's Episcopal Church required an overhaul. The repair techs were all related and traveled across the US and were capable of building a new organ from scratch. Not much demand for them in the macro economic scale, but they had plenty of work booked ahead. It was amazing to see them work as a team and complete all the repairs with hand tools. BTW, St. Luke's was originally built to be a cathedral and the organ is sized accordingly.

[TomG]

I don't know Ed. I don't think a pipe organ lends itself well to digital reproduction. Sure, you can synthesize the sound to where it's sounds like the real thing in a pair of headphones, but a large church or cathedral is another story.

Tom

[EdK]

(02-06-2016, 10:30 PM)TomG Wrote: I don't know Ed. I don't think a pipe organ lends itself well to digital reproduction. Sure, you can synthesize the sound to where it's sounds like the real thing in a pair of headphones, but a large church or cathedral is another story.

Tom

I don't disagree with you Tom. I just think that the skilled artisans that currently make that happen are a dying breed.

Ed

[TomG]

There are a few younger guys in some of those videos, so hopefully they will help carry on the tradition. If not, at least they will be immortalized in YouTube.

Tom