How the Organ Business Changed the City
Download 18.06 Mb.
|
| Figure 3: Moller lumberyards. From 1981 Moller Promotional Brochure.
he main structural support for the organ was provided by pine, fir, or poplar. West coast sugar pines, ponderosa, gum and spruce pine were imported from the western United States, although at first the companies used local pine varieties from a Moller lumber mill in West Virginia. Hardwoods such as poplar, maple, cherry, black walnut, birch, and quartered oak came from the Mid-Atlantic and northeast. There woods were used for the decorative organ casings and for other decorative elements. More exotic woods like Honduran Mahogany and Teak were imported from South America; these were also used for exterior decorative purposes. The pedals keys were made of white maple and ebony. Most of these woods were imported through various distributors. The Mollers used a distributor who worked out of Baltimore and imported raw wood and wood products from all over the globe. Today, the Eastern Pipe Organ Company uses J. Bruce Barnes from Crozet, Virginia as the main hardwood supplier for their company.4 Metals are the second major components for pipe organs. A variety of different metals are used to make different types of pipes and for the internal wiring. There are essentially two different types of metal pipes; one type uses pure tin, or a tin and lead a  lloy, to produce a high-pitched reed sound; the pipes are made of different metal alloys that can be manipulated to produce different sizes of pipes with a wide array of s
Figure 4: Unrolling the sheet metal. From 1981 Moller Promotional Brochure. ounding capabilities. The metals for the tin pipes are currently being imported from Malaysia, Bolivia, China, and Peru. Alloys using zinc are generally used for the larger pipes; the zinc has always come in pre-rolled sheets, whereas Moller used to do some of the rolling of the tin sheets on site at the factory. Download 18.06 Mb. Share with your friends:
|