Casavant Freres Ltee
August 18th  1955


Dear Mr. Kolbinson: -

Your letter of Aug. 12th has been received and I was pleased to hear from you after such a long time.

Regarding the old Casavant organ which you succeeded in buying so cheaply, it is indeed a huge job for a residence. I have the old contract form on my desk and note that it is a 4 manual of about 45 registers built in 1907 (except the case) for the sum of $7,150.00. From our old drawings, it stood in a chamber 29'-00" wide 14'-00" deep and around 20'-00" high.

It seemed to have been originally blown by a 3 H.P. motor working the feeders on one of the two bellows one of which is 11'-0" x 5'-0". They are indeed huge but in those days of either hydraulic or electric motors working feeders through a crank-shaft, the reservoirs (or storage) had to be big because of the operation of feeders. This may have been changed later for an electric fan-blower, but the reservoirs would not have been changed.

You would certainly be wise to have modern separate reservoirs for each department and discard that old-fashioned huge material. We would be willing to make these for you as soon as you have planned your new layout of the organ interior. It would be necessary for you to send us a pencil sketch of the sizes and where the intake and curtain-valve would be on each reservoir. In planning their sizes you should calculate roughly two square feet of area per stop.

As an example, your Swell has fifteen stops, so its separate reservoir should not be less than 30 square feet - say 5'0" x 6'0". The Choir of six stops would call for about 12 square feet, say 3'0" x 4'0", and it is also wise to keep the shape of each as nearly square as possible for the sake of steadiness; that is to say, a reservoir for about 12 square feet would be very steady if it were around 3'6" x 3'6" - still fairly good at 3'0" x 4'0" but not so good at 6' x 2'.

I think you will have no trouble in converting the action to electro-pneumatic, but do not forget to block the bleed-hole of each distributor note (by glueing a strip of leather over the holes inside) otherwise your magnets to exhaust each primary will not function well. You could run the regulating screws in to stop any recharge, but a narrow piece of leather over the small inside holes is the safer method.

You should be able to get some success from the Reisner form of coupler (which seems to be a steal from my own original form of 1916) but I prefer my own old wooden dowel roller to none at all.

We gave a price in 1951 for the complete electrification with a modern console on this job, but learned, finally, that the congregation had disbanded and the Church property sold. Anyway "it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good."

Good luck to you in your venture and be sure you plan ample space for the job.

Sincerely yours,

Stephen Stoot

 

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