Shetland spinning and melodeon restoring

The roller organ awaits a pane of glass

I have begun to spin the Shetland fleece that I scoured and dyed late last summer. As you may recall, I dyed it three different colors, hoping to produce a heathered yarn.

Shetland divided and dyed

 

The bulk of the fleece was dyed Chestnut, and although in the picture there appears to be blue and red, it is actually teal/green and red.

I made a number of spun samples and the time has come to simply stop dilly-dallying and dive right in, come what may. I was not entirely happy with any of the samples, but they came close. So now I'm spinning a whole bobbin full of singles to see what the journey is like, and when the plying begins (3-ply, Navajo style) I'll discover what worked well and what didn't. The second and subsequent skeins should see a bit of improvement over the first. This first skein may become a stand-by just in case I run short on the project.

I'm spinning from the drum carded batts. It's enjoyable to be at the wheel again. The Kromski 'Mazaurka' castle wheel is out for this one, and I am using the lowest ratio available. Gotta say, I'm pleased with the way it's going.

Fresh off the drum carder

 

First bobbin of singles in the works

I am so excited! I have booked a class at the Newbury School of Weaving with Justin Quizzero. I have been wanting to learn from him for a few years, ever since I saw him spinning in this video:

Although I have done spinning on my great wheel, I feel that some proper in-person instruction will go a long way towards imparting some confidence. So, a day-long class at the end of May awaits. Can't wait!

Work on the Roller Organ has ended for now. When the weather warms up, I may do some cabinet touch ups. And I hope to rebuild the bellows in the spring as well. Restoration of the Medoleon has begun in earnest now.

Lid open, keys removed

The exhausters need rebuilding and that is what I'm starting on. But there will be a slight pause on that front while I order some goat skin and leather.

Exhauster corner showing goat skin gusset

Exhauster skin and skeletal boards deconstructed

I'm keeping all the old pieces in order to use them as templates wherever possible. While I wait for supplies, I'm moving on to the reed bed. These reeds were extremely difficult to remove as they don't have a groove for a reed puller to grab onto. I had to use pliers and it was a bit of a struggle in a handful of instances.

The reeds pulled from their chambers

I will put the reeds in the ultra-sonic cleaner and make sure they all sing OK before putting them back.

The soundboard needs a bit of TLC. The previous restorers (in 1978, it says so inside the cabinet) repaired some cracks and I think they need a bit of reinforcement with glue. The whole board needs cleaning and sanding to remove old glue and remnants of velvet where the keys protrude from their cells.

It's all happening.

 

Ice, Fiber, and Roller Organ

Happy New Year!

We had quite an ice storm last week. I awoke to find everything covered in 1/4" of ice, and the power was out. It came back on about four hours later and the internet came back on about an hour after that. Temperatures have been cold, remaining well below freezing (most nights in the single digits hovering around 0F) so the ice is still with us. It is very beautiful; the moon was almost full the other night when I walked out to the mailbox and the lunar luminescence caused the ice encrusted trees to glitter magically. But it took me a long time to remove the ice from the car the other day; I didn't get it all removed.

I skeined a bobbin's worth of orange yarn last week. One nice perk of using a wood stove is the convenience of having a yarn dryer handy at all times.

Drying after a bath

78 yards, triple ply

I have worked steadily on the roller organ I picked up last month. It came with a number of issues. The cabinet was mostly solid except for one side that had been snapped in half. The action was very dirty, the felts put on in a rough fashion. It tried to wheeze out a bit of a tune but a struggle, it was.

My goal was to get it functional again, and patched up enough to go providing entertainment for another hundred years.  A complete refinishing of the cabinet is not something I'm addressing at this time. I don't have a heated, well-ventilated workspace in which to undertake the job. It is something I would need to do outdoors, but wouldn't you know I'm am most motivated and inspired to undertake these projects in wintertime! Come spring, the yard and garden will be the focus. But I'm going to see about carving out some time to enhance the cabinet. In the meantime, it shows its age, as it should.

The date of manufacture was stamped in two locations within the cabinet: 1907.

Date of manufacture stampled on exhauster

In a nutshell: So far, I've cleaned the cabinet (more to go) and motor and keys. Took out the reed bed and rid it of accumulated dust and made sure each reed was functional. I've also glued broken bits together again.

Loose veneer on a lid segment

Using heavy books as weights on re-glued veneer

One side of the cabinet was snapped in half 

The motor and keys were encrusted with grime.
 

The roller mechanism 

The keys with oversized felts

Action removed and ready for cleaning

The keys were cleaned using a Dremel ...

... and ultrasonic cleaner

New felts and leather pads (which were missing)

The action temporarily back in situ

Gluing a broken bearing back together

Gluing the window frame back together

The exhauster valves had been covered with covers from a paper back book! They should be leather. Sadly, the valves between the bellows and exhausters were covered with some sort of lined paper, they also need to be leather. I write 'sadly', because replacing them means opening up the bellows which means re-building them. I have some bellows cloth that I purchased for the melodeon and was considering using it. But seeing how it's so expensive and this roller organ plays kind of ok even though the inside valve flaps are paper(!), I've decided to wait to update the bellows.

The exhauster valves were covered with paperback covers

 

The book covers that were used as flaps. Looks like a saucy little novel.

Looking through the outer exhauster valves, the lined paper covering the inner valves is visible. Ugh.

Here is a short little video of a test I ran this evening. It's a bit wheezy still, but mind you, this is with paper valves between the bellows and exhauster! When I get around to re-doing the bellows and replacing the paper with leather, I feel confident it will sound stronger.

Also a problem is the crank handle. It can be seen in the video that it was, at one time, welded back on. Unfortunately, the weld is crooked and contributes to the clicking noise, I think. Not sure what I will do about that.

The cabinet, as I wrote above, will not be refinished now. I will make it look ok, but further refinishing will be in order. I have cleaned up the lid pieces and they need to be re-attached.

I'm quite pleased with how this project has progressed. It's so cool, and so much fun!

A final note... you may wonder why the music seems to last so long considering the smallish diameter of the cobb. Well, very clever engineering! These organs were designed to rotate 3 complete times around. The pegs in the cobb, which create the music, are set in a spiral. The motor mechanism has a worm gear (visible on the left) that pushes the cobb slowly to the right as the motor turns, thereby getting a lot more mileage for each song. I think that's the most clever design!

Best watched on Youtube . . .