Bedient Pipe Organ Company

We are expanding our crew with an opening for an apprentice pipe organ builder!

Apprentices learn our ancient craft through hands-on training along with optional academic study, leading to a rewarding career in this unique industry. They will have the opportunity to explore all areas of organ building based on personal interests and abilities. Organ builders work with wood, leather, felt, and other materials to build and repair pipe organ components, using both hand and power tools. Our shop uses a CNC router and apprentices will have the freedom to explore this tool and its programming. This person will also work with electronic organ control systems and basic 12 VDC wiring. Apprentices must be available for occasional travel to neighboring communities and out-of-state trips. Job-specific training will be provided, but some prior experience in any shop setting is required.

If you or someone you know loves building things and working with their hands, and has an interest in music, send an email to [email protected] to learn more. We would love to have you join our team!

A couple months ago we shared shop photos of our crew restoring a 1901 Pfeffer organ and moving it to Plattsburg, Missouri. Here you can see the final results. Many thanks to Brent Johnson and the Organ Media Foundation for preparing this video documenting the whole process.

It has been both a pleasure and an honor to save this fine organ and give it a second opportunity to make music and inspire a faith community. Thanks are also due to Fr. Eric Schneider at St. Ann Catholic Church for his vision and leadership, and for making this project a reality!

Moving and Restoring a 1901 J.G. Pfeffer Organ In 2022 the Bedient Pipe Organ Company removed a 9-rank one-manual J.G. Pfeffer organ from the closed Trinity Lutheran Church in Scribner, Nebraska, restored...

The pipes of the Pfeffer organ were in need of repair too. All of the metal pipes were washed with a mild chelating agent to remove the dirt and grime that had collected over the years. Dents were removed and damaged toes were reshaped as needed. New stainless steel tuning collars replaced the aluminum collars from the 1970s. The feet of the Dulciana were so badly bowed that we made replacements with thicker metal for many of them.

The façade pipes needed special attention. First, we cleaned them with Simple Green, safely lifting away decades of dust, soot, and bird droppings without damaging the underlying paint or silver leaf. The colors that emerged were astonishingly vibrant! One pipe had been very badly damaged long ago. The lower lip had been pushed way in, then something caused the languid to be smashed down past it, obliterating the sensitive geometry between them that allows the pipe to speak. Plus, the pipe was riddled with dents. Ryan was able to disassemble the pipe, reconstruct the lower lip, make a new languid, and successfully put it back together. Mark and Timothy then replicated the stencil and filled in the missing paint. The appearance and tone match the others seamlessly.

The original bass pipes of the Dulciana were inexplicably discarded in the 1970s and replaced with full-length Aeoline basses protruding crudely through the ceiling. Pfeffer would have originally used stopped wood or stopped metal pipes for this. Unable to determine which he used here, we chose to make new wood pipes using the same scale and construction details as the Gedeckt in his 1887 instrument that we restored a few years ago. They fit very nicely in the space available. Ryan voiced them with a prominent quint tone, making them a good match for the metal pipes.

The Gamba in this organ is also a replacement for the original rank, but here all 61 pipes were replaced. These basses were also full length and protruded through the ceiling. We suspect that if the metal chosen to make the original Gamba pipes was as thin as was used on the Dulciana, the original Gamba pipes might have also bowed and collapsed, but been deemed too badly damaged for repair. We chose to retain this replacement rank, rather than make our own speculative reconstruction of what Pfeffer might have used. However, we had to deal with the bass pipes sticking through the ceiling. We decided to cut the longest pipes short enough to fit inside the case, but make qualifying tube inserts that allow the pipe to speak with tone quality and pitch as a full length pipe.

Following a little corrective voicing on individual pipes, the organ begins to regain its original sound!

When the Pfeffer organ was rebuilt in the 1970s, the original double-rise wind reservoir with its feeder bellows was discarded. In its place a much smaller single-rise reservoir was installed. This made the winding much stiffer than is appropriate for this style of organ.

Our restoration included replicating the original reservoir with its feeder bellows as closely as possible. Ryan was able to reference existing evidence in the organ (vacant screw holes, dangling brackets, etc.) to determine the exact size the replica needed to be, to within a few millimeters. We also referenced other extant Pfeffer organs in the area to recreate the construction details, down to the chamfer on the edges of the boards. After the reservoir was built in the shop, we partnered with our colleague Joe Granger for the leatherwork. We only needed to make one modification, and that was to move the pump handle to the right side of the case to accommodate its new installation.

Although a modern blower is used most of the time, the organ can now be pumped by hand once again. The winding also has a subtle, gentle flexibility, giving the listener a true sense of breath as the organist plays.

Next was the Pfeffer organ's key action. The natural key tops are a synthetic material and we were able to simply clean it with Key-Brite, removing the grime and mold that had accumulated. We replaced the felt on the balance rail and front guide pin rails, but turned to our colleagues at Great Plains Piano to install new bushing cloth inside each key. They also deep-cleaned the key sticks and brightened the naturals with a combination of UV light bleaching and ultra-fine sanding. The trackers and couplers all received new "leather" nuts and bushings. The pedal board received a make-over as well, replacing all the moth-eaten felt and deteriorated leather.

The windchest of the 1901 Pfeffer required extensive work. The table was riddled with cracks, which had been somewhat crudely patched in the 1970s. Also at that time, the pallets were modified to reduce their weight at the tail and tail springs were added to prevent wind from leaking through at that point.

After thorough documentation, the table was routed off and replaced with a new table of marine-grade plywood. Plywood resists cracking caused by seasonal changes in humidity. The channeling and toe holes were all replicated and the original toe boards reinstalled. The original pallets were too severely altered to restore, so we made new pallets of quarter-sawn Alaskan cedar with one modification: we added a tail pin rather than replicate Pfeffer's technique of gluing the pallets in place. In this way, the pallets can be removed if they need to be serviced in the future. We added small compass springs to the pallet tails to ensure that they seal tightly. The lower grid covering was replicated as well, using mattress ticking and distemper paint.

Following a rigorous round of testing, the windchest is ready for another century of service!

Happy New Year to all our customers and friends! 2023 was a busy year and in the coming weeks we will be sharing photos from some of the projects we completed. We start with a project began in the summer of 2022, removing the 1901 Pfeffer organ from the former Trinity Lutheran Church in rural Scribner, NE. The organ has been restored and installed in its new home in Missouri. Future posts will highlight the various aspects of our work in the shop, and of course, the final installation. Here are photos of the removal process.

There’s no better way to start the day than with a freshly honed No. 7 jointer plane, translucent thin shavings, and a dead-flat windchest grid.

1901 Pfeffer restoration.

Our Opus 71 has found a new home!

This organ was built in 2000 for the Amistad Chapel in the home offices of the United Churches of Christ in Cleveland, Ohio. This spring, the UCC moved to a smaller office building in Cleveland, one without a chapel. The organ needed a new home. Our crew traveled to Cleveland in March to disassemble the organ and put it in storage as plans for its future developed.

The leadership at the UCC wanted to honor the history associated with the Amistad Chapel in Cleveland, and chose Faith Congregational Church in Hartford, Connecticut to receive the organ. One of the congregation's early pastors was the Rev. Dr. James Pennington, who helped raise funds and coordinate the effort to return the would-be slaves who were on the Amistad to their home country of Sierra Leone.

Our crew just returned from nearly a week in Hartford, installing and tuning the organ. The members of Faith Congregational Church are looking forward to using Opus 71 in their chapel for small worship services, concerts, and possibly teaching lessons.

The organ's stop list can be seen here: https://pipeorgandatabase.org/organ/71813