This page is photos from a trip we made to Organ Supply Industries in Erie PA.  I found it a wonderful experience.  They make practically everything for pipe organs right there.  They also make special order items.  That is me standing out front.

This lovely lady is gluing up felt and leather valve material with PVC glue.  They use lots of this material for the billions of valves they have made.

She is gluing the valve disks to the felt and leather material. She is right next to the table where they punch out those fiber disks.  Who wouldn't love to have a table with all those wonderful toys...er... tools?

Above are large bass organ pipes all cut out to build 4 sets of twelve notes.  The 4 blocks to the left are the stopper and they hold the sides together for gluing and at right are the bottom blocks showing the air way which is the "V" cutout.  These all sit on the long boards that are the sides.  As they go back the pieces get larger as the notes go lower pitched.  All is ready now for some heavy duty gluing.

Below is the start of a stack of organ manuals (keyboards)

They begin with blocks glued up and milled to be shaped like a whole keyboard.

This is the bottom of the keyboard.  These have the bushing holes mortised in and they are bushed.  The bottom of the keys are shaped for the overhanging style keys.  You notice that the keytops are already on.  The top key buttons are bushed and glued on.  Notice the pencil line diagonal across the wood part.  This will keep the keys in order once they are cut apart.

I ran out of film, so I don't have the rest of the job.  From this point they have two machines that cut them.  One does the narrow part of the keys all at once.  The other does the cuts between the keytops up to the beginning of the sharps.  They then cross cut the wood at the front of the sharps and then there are separate keys.

I loved the machines that cut them.  One machine was like having 60 scroll saws all lined up 1/2 inch apart.  Whoa! Tools!

We also got shots of them making reproduction Wurlitzer Theater organ reservoirs.  Here they are sitting on their shipping boxes.

I loved their huge wooden box with a drain.  The sides of the box was coated in thick shellac.  This is where they pour shellac through all the wind channels in chests.  I wish I had room for one.  It was long enough to put an eight foot long pipe chest in it.

I have done business with OSI for decades and they are a good company to deal with.  They have several items for player piano rebuilding that none of the piano or player piano supply companies have.