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How were reed organ reeds machined?

Allen1943

Plastic
Joined
Nov 23, 2020
The attached pictures are of reeds taken from George A. Prince (Buffalo, NY) melodeons (reed organs) manufactured in 1846 and 1860.

The first picture shows what I believe to be the shape of the basic brass strip from which the 1846 reeds were milled (here bent into an Z-shape as part of the case hardware). Why the pointed cut? was that required by the available machinery?

These next three pictures show the tops and undersides of 1846 reeds.

The next picture shows reeds from an 1860 instrument. Later reeds from this company are simply cut off square. The reeds are chamfered on both sides. Some, as in these examples, were punched through at one end to provide a handle for pulling them out.

All the reeds show a wavy milling surface on both the chamfers on the sides and on the margins of the undersides, which I believe was produced by an incremental feed. Is that so?

I also think the undersides were milled in at least two passes, since the ends of the pass are asymmetrical.

I am intrigued by the idea that this company seemed to be using the same machinery to mill reeds in 1846 as in 1860 (and I have examples of the reeds from the same company in 1864 which show the same features). Other companies operating around and after the Civil War show much smoother machining, even when chamfering the sides. The picture below shows Mason & Hamlin reeds (Boston) from the 1880s with smoothly chamfered sides.

Any light you could shed on the machining processes necessary for producing these reeds would be greatly appreciated! I am interested in both the machining process, and in pictures of the likely machinery used—very little machinery from this industry has survived. I would be happy to correspond with any subset of the membership with interest and expertise in these historical questions.

I am having trouble attaching the pictures (I'm 19th century, too). Help, please?
Allen C. Myers
 
Looks to me to be mostly as-cast with a plunge cut with a small horizontal milling cutter. The reeds themselves are stamped and likely tuned to pitch with a file by a craftsman with a good ear.

You can clearly see on some where the casting sprues were sawn off.
 
The 1846-1860 time frame includes a massive brass sheet rolling industry in CT that supported clock making, button making and other industries. In the mid-1830's, clock movements made with frames of riveted brass straps (strips) were common. The movements with stamped shapes of brass sheet came a little later.

Like so many innovations in history, military products drove the invention of machine tools and milling machines became a common manufacturing tool in the early 19th century, largely for gun making, but soon for anything that could make money. The early machine tools were generally designed for a specific operation on a specific product. The British navy, in 1802, commissioned their Portsmouth block-making machines, the prime example of machine design for mass production of a military product. The block factory was soon well-known around the world and American gun makers applied the idea to their business. The circa 1855 Lincoln miller is thought to be the first general purpose American milling machine.

The reed holders were probably made from rolled brass strips. The slots and dovetailed edges were done with horizontal milling machines that were probably custom built for those operations, along with the cutters. The chatter marks in the milled surfaces could be chalked up to cutter design and runout, loose machine guides and hand feeding done by an operator on piecework pay. Better cutters and better machines, possibly with power feeds, could produce smoother machined surfaces.

Final assembly would have involved filing the reed and holder to tune it and then riveting the reed to the holder and stamping the note identity.

Larry
 
I appreciate this thread, and, at the risk of making a pun: it does resonate with me. Since about 1968, we've had a Mason & Hamlin 'reed organ' in our family. It came from an auction of an estate somewhere on Cape Ann, in Massachusetts. The organ resided in my parents' house until 1987 when it was brought into my own household.
A few moves of household occurred, and since 1991, the organ has resided in our present home.

I always wondered what the reeds looked like, imagining them to be somewhat like harmonica reeds. Unfortunately, time has not been kind to the guts of our reed organ. from the sounds of things, the bellows have probably become brittle and crumbled with age. For a number of years, though, we did enjoy playing that reed organ.

The amount of fine woodworking and ornate ornamentation on the reed organ is something in its own right. Our organ has side brackets with round pads to take parlor lamps, and a row of stops. One stop, 'Vox Humana' always intrigued me.I was inside the organ far enough some years back to see that "Vox Humana" has some kind of turbine to spin a set of paddles (vanes) to produce a 'quavering' in the sound of the reeds.

At this point, the old organ is just a keepsake, though it would be nice to get it playing again. I recall that when I was a kid, there was an add for "Lee Silent Suction" blowers in "Popular Mechanics" magazine, and the firm was located in Tjunga (sp ?) California. The premise of that ad was to eliminate the need to pump reed organs or player pianos with your feet. I wonder if anyone here has any information about retrofitting a suction blower (exhauster, I think it is called) to these old reed organs ? I recall seeing a reed organ rigged up to use an 'Electrolux' tank vacuum cleaner in place of the exhauster bellows, but that was when I was perhaps 8 or 10 years of age. The Electrolux vacuum made a racket of its own, and I've since wondered if it drew too much of a partial vacuum or too high a cfm.

Without working exhauster bellows on our Mason & Hamlin reed organ, I cannot tap in and get a manometer reading(or more likely, an auto mechanic's vacuum gauge) for how much vacuum is within range.

Our Mason and Hamlin reed organ has the original stained Oak finish, and a lot of it is held together with round-head brass screws. Like so many other household items, reed organs and pianos have pretty much become almost obsolete. Older homes had a 'piano window'- a small stained glass window in the parlor or living room intended to be located above an upright piano. Most well-furnished homes had a piano, and some had a reed organ. Gathering around a piano with family members or friends to play and sing was a common way to entertain or enjoy time together. I can also recall going into bars or taverns and it was usual to find an upright piano on the premises. Sometimes, a customer might sit down and play, usually the kinds of songs known as "tear jerkers". I can remember going into bars with a crew off a jobsite and it was common for someone amongst the group to sit down and start playing songs like "Danny Boy" or "The Wearing of the Green" with the crew singing along. Different era, I guess.

I had a few years of piano lessons when I was a kid, as my mother thought it was the thing to do, make a 'well rounded' person out of me. I learned I have a good ear, and also learned to "be good on my feet" or 'handle myself' as a result of those piano lessons. The local piano teacher was a woman who had a cavernous and dark living room with a Steinway baby grand piano. She had dried flowers and doilies on the furniture. I was one of very few, if not the only boy she had as a student. The bulk of her pupils were all girls. I had music theory workbooks to do assignments in, exercises on the keyboard, and new 'pieces' to learn. The teacher liked me as a pupil because I came down on the keys like I meant business and had the hands to 'make the chords'. The girl students tended to 'tinkle the ivories', and the teacher told me she liked having me as a student because I played her piano with some real feeling. Unfortunately, this was in Brooklyn, NY in the 1950's-early 60's. The boys on the block were almost always out in the street playing ball, some derivative of baseball as a rule, with interuptions when cars came down the street.
I was born with fine and gross motor skill delays, am probably on the autistic spectrum, so had no interest in playing ball, could never catch or throw a ball, and was intent on learning about machinery. I was already looked upon as "different" or an oddball by my peers. Piano lessons were the icing on that cake. I'd come out of a piano lesson with my music theory book and other music books under my arm, and the neighborhood boys would stop their ball game to heckle me. It was: "Hey Michaels... d'you like the doilies on the furniture ?" and it went downhill from there. Naturally, this always escalated into a face-off, and usually a fist fight to settle things. It's funny to think of how we kids observed some kind of "rules of the ring", giving me time to put my music books down under a neighbor's hedges and hang my jacket on the hedges and put my eye glasses in a safe place. Off we'd go, slugging it out. Dad was from a rough neighborhood, so fights in the streets were something he grew up with. Dad's attitude was: you gotta learn to take a punch, and you gotta learn to give better than you got.." So, Dad would spar with me and taught me a few moves and combinations. The result was piano lessons led to informal boxing and street fighting lessons from Dad, and I learned to take care of myself. Of course, the piano lessons were another story. The teacher was teaching me to play pieces like sonatas, and her 'maker or breaker' was 'Fuer Elise'. It went on interminably long.

I got fairly well into Fuer Elise, and realized: I was learning to play pieces that only mothers of piano students seemed to want to hear. I put my foot down with my mother and said I'd had enough of piano lessons, and if I was going to play a piano, it was going to be music people wanted to hear.
End of piano lessons. Not the end of confrontations in the streets, which continued until I went my own way to Brooklyn Technical HS. I was shut of my peers from grade school and the neighborhood. If I sit down at a piano, I have to be pretty well 'lubricated' and play by ear. The old Mason and Hamlin reed organ tends to make a pretty good player out of a marginal piano player when you work the stops, which includes 'octave couplers'. It's a much richer sound, at least to my ear, when compared to a piano.

I know at one time in the USA, there were quite a number of reed organ builders. Estey (Brattleboro, Vermont ?) was probably the most prolific, and Mason & Hamlin produced quite a number of reed organs in different styles. Similarly, there were quite a number of piano manufacturers in the USA, most of which are also long gone. About the only instrument I do play is a harmonica, which has gone on overseas jobs as well as Power Authority jobs with me. There is something to be said for being able to make your own music rather than relying on the latest technology.
 
Fun story, Joe. Don't put a vacuum motor in your M&H--it over-stresses the reeds, and it takes away the most characteristic ability of reed organs to vary volume with the foot treadles. You might enjoy visiting the Reed Organ Society site, <reedsoc.org>. Go to Database and plug in "mason" and you'll pictures and specs on several hundred Mason & Hamlin organs. Emmons Hamlin--one of the two principals--worked for Prince in Buffalo, and carried the idea for chamfered reeds to that firm in Boston. I know of no other company that used chamfered reeds. Supposedly, it was to prevent misuse by others. You probably have the skills to restore your M&H; the biggest need is time.
 
After the Civil War, reed frames were stamped from rolled brass sheets, then the reed slots milled out. As you note, reed tongues were stamped from thin rolled brass sheets and riveted onto the frames--at first by hand, later by purpose-designed machines. tongues were then shaped by both milling and hand scraping to pitch.
I think these Prince pre-CW reed frames were cut from rolled brass strips. The "fish-tailed" frames had their points cut off. (I have read speculation that the fish-tails aided guiding the reeds back into their slots, but at some point Prince switched over to square-ended reed frames like other manufacturers). My first question was about these fish-tailed reed frames: (a) did 1846 cutting machinery require that shape of cut and (b) what kind of machine did the cutting. In reading through material on this site and elsewhere, the answer to (a) is "no"--Prince chopped the strips that way for his own reasons; and (b) the machine used to cut that shape was some kind of punch press with a die of that shape.
The "chatter marks" on the sides of the reed frames seem almost identical in the 1846 and 1860 examples, which led me to believe they might have been manufactured on the same machine. I would have expected loose or out-of-adjustment machinery to produce uneven or varying chatter marks, but these seem to me to be quite uniform--and that uniformity persists for at least 20 years in that company. (The undersides of the reed frames show both the regular "scalloping" of the chamfers, and also some of what I would call chatter-marks in that they are irregular.) That is why I wondered whether the regular "scallop" pattern of the chamfers was produced by a milling machine with an incremental feed, like the old hand-operated drill presses that advanced an increment for each revolution of the chuck (rather than smoothly). The regularity of these "scallops" argues (to me) for some machine-regulated feed rather than hand-regulated--it just strikes me as too uniform for hand work, especially considering that the 1846 examples are from organ #381 and the 1860 examples are from organ #25,999. Given that there are 49-61 reeds in each instrument, that's a lot of machining!
 
I was one of very few, if not the only boy she had as a student. The bulk of her pupils were all girls. The teacher liked me as a pupil because I came down on the keys like I meant business and had the hands to 'make the chords'. The girl students tended to 'tinkle the ivories', and the teacher told me she liked having me as a student because I played her piano with some real feeling.
You hung out with the wrong girls :D

She's a little restrained in this piece but since you're from Noo Yawk .....

(It's a Steinway, too, instead of a Mason & Hamlin, but concert halls are too cheap to buy the good stuff ... )

 
Allen, the milling machine that they could have used might have looked something like this Lincoln type of milling machine. In the 1840's the cutters might have looked more like a circular file rather than a modern milling cutter. The mill may have been power fed but someone can easily make the regular scalloped cuts like those by feeding by hand if the cutter is moving relatively fast compared to the movement of the table. I see enough variation in the cuts to lead me to believe that the machine was hand cranked for the feed.

Another possibility for a mill would be a hand miller which used a rack and pinion for feed and just steady pressure on the feed handle would naturally feed the table in a stuttering motion as the cutter would cut and not cut due to the eccentricity of the cutter.
 

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This is helpful--basically, I need to get an education in 19th century machining. CT was as others have said the main center of brass production (Meriden), and also machinery for machining and hardening brass (Bristol).
If the machine was "hand-cranked for the feed", then the fact that Prince reeds look the same in the chamfers over a twenty-year period suggest that he was using the same machine/same methodology to chamfer reeds. Given the thousands of reeds required (over that time period), it just seems incredibly (=uneconomically) labor intensive.
Prince went out of business in 1879, just as many other reed organ manufacturers were really starting to go gangbusters.
Allen
 
I don't think it would be too time consuming to machine them with hand feed. If you had a fixture set up on the table you could probably machine one a minute or even faster. Those hand milling machines were meant for production and the company would likely have more than one machine with each machine having a different setup on it.
 
Also remember that factories often made purpose-built machines that would simply be long gone as well the people who made them. A machine that roughly cuts the recess for the reed wouldn't have been too hard to make at the time.
 
Joe Michael's machine probably needs nothing more than cleaning and bellows repair.

I have a set of reeds contained in a wooden frame taken from a pump organ wreck many years ago. I have another wreck in an abandoned home of mine right now.

It wasn't, Joe, 'fine woodworking,' a more accurate term--though the wood working was very good, would be 'careful production shop wood working.'
 
An interesting thread, Allen; thanks for starting it. I've been a reed organ enthusiast ever since I played my grandmother's in the 1950s and have owned many over the years, though I've never before considered how the reeds were made. At one time I owned thirteen of them, though I'm down to my last one (an Alexandre harmonium of 1867).

A thought about the scalloped cutouts - would climb-milling give this result? I've never tried it, but I believe it gives a faster cut with a poorer finish, which may have appealed to the makers.

As for the pianist, she's good and certainly lives the music, but give me Ann Page on the harmonium any day

Ann Page plays Lionel Rogg Fanfare Harmonium Festival Bern - YouTube

George B.
 








 
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