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Organ Blower?

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Pete Dunk:
I came across an advert for an "Organ Blower" which is basically a fan unit which I assume is used in a reed organ as it doesn't seem large enough for a pipe organ of any size. My immediate thought was a wind driven tuning table of course. The stated output is circa 3" water gauge of pressure, which meant nothing to me. A quick Google informed me that 28" water gauge is roughly 1 psi which is not a lot, so 3"wg is tiny! The fan unit looks quite big and is described as "heavy", the motor output is 0.25 h.p. so a little under 200 Watts.


Does anyone know anything about 'Organ Blowers' and how much air pressure is needed to sound a reed? Pictures attached, two more to follow in another post.

Pete Dunk:
More pics

folkloristmark:
The only thing I know is small busker organs have a two part bellows joined by a simple leather valve, so like a bag pipe the pressure is built up from the blower source and held in a reserve to maintain constant flow to retain good pitch. The crude  tuning table blowers I have seen are direct adapted electric motors that were calibrated by using a voltage regulator to set the required simulated pressure.I think an organ blower or vac cleaner would work but the supply would need to be regulated with a voltage drop. Some motors require a load peak to actually start that may need to be taken into account. In my 12 volt reed organ the car battery needs to be very good to actually start the motor if the battery gets flat the problem is a restart even when the battery will power the organ for quite a time longer. So you might need two settings one to start the moter and another to maintain a correct pressure.Trail and error.
If this helps

hickory-wind:
I use a blower driven air tuning table. I actually connected a manometer to a Hohner two row and played to determine the pressure:
http://bellingersbuttonboxes.com/workshop/

I now use a +/- 2" water column pressure gauge for most button accordion tuning and a +/- 5" water column for concertinas as they have a smaller bellows cross section and correspondingly higher pressure.

You can see my table in action here:
https://youtu.be/un-AvLaCenU

I use a laboratory DC power supply to finely adjust the pressure. The pressure gauge is in the video but washed out since the light setting was not optimal.

I have the blower in an adjacent closet surrounded with lots of sound deadening materials so my tuning room is very quiet.

Scott

Nigel:
Winston. I bet you would like one of these in your attic workshop  >:E

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