Reframing Design Amid the Pandemic

The pandemic lockdown suddenly changed everyone's lives. I decided to use the time off well.

I was relatively new to Autodesk Fusion and used my free time to model a pipe organ mechanical key action in three-dimensional solids. I spent a semester computer modeling a library of typical key action components one year before building my first triangular organ pipes. Now, I could put that library of components to good use.

I would visit my workshop each weekend, where I made some upgrades.

Something unexpected happened during the pandemic. My sister and I connected with my grandfather's family in Italy. My grandfather Stefano immigrated to this country from the small village of Vermiglio in the northern Italian Alps. The Alpine region of Europe is a shared culture, regardless of national borders. I used a newfound understanding of my ancestry and upbringing to craft a design narrative that I identified as my own, seemingly passed down through an ancestry of shared cross-border culture that engendered a strong sense of community and purpose through art, architecture, and daily ritual.

Let me term that design narrative a design language I call Vermiglio design. It uses more straightforward build methods and Indigenous materials. Primitive finishing materials like milk paint can also be used for the sake of rural antiquity.

I had never used milk paint before, so I built two plant stands with what I thought Vermiglio design should represent. Each had a milk-painted leg set mounted to a frame and panel top consisting of contrasting hardwoods assembled with cope and stick joinery. I couldn't entirely escape the pluralist design language I spent years crafting.

The Flûte octaviante triangulaire: Because Now there Really is Such a Thing

I sometimes assign myself a project in the workshop for no other reason than I find something about its design or construction thought-provoking.

 

These design studies assist me in developing woodworking methods for more essential projects, such as the one I describe here, which proved far more involved than I had initially expected. About a year before the pandemic, I set out to better understand wood organ pipes made with triangular cross sections by building one after seeing a rank of triangular flutes up in the pipe chambers at Northrop Auditorium. I attempted construction elements typical of the late nineteenth century, such as sunken blocks and inverted mouths. Those pipes were my first introduction to building triangular organ pipes from wood. One year later, I began a follow-on project to explore the effect of base angle and scale on tonal results.

 

The triangular pipes I built in my shop led to an unanticipated yet noteworthy outcome. I doubled the length of a pipe I made, not knowing what to expect. Surprisingly, it effortlessly became harmonic at lower wind pressure. This discovery opens up possibilities. A harmonic flute that overblows on lower wind pressure introduces a new and valuable tone color to the tonal design of a small cabinet or continuo organ. Furthermore, triangular pipes nest efficiently, potentially making room for another stop within the same footprint and enhancing the instrument's versatility.

 

I know no documented example of a harmonic stop whose pipes are made of wood with a triangular cross-section. Let me, therefore, introduce you to the Flûte octaviante triangulaire, as it might have been named had it come from the shop of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll.

Resawing Logs to Lumber

Even in a modest workshop like mine, getting valuable lumber from downed trees is possible.

Let's say a tree comes down in a storm, and it is one of your favorite trees. As a woodworker, I've always wanted to make something special from that tree. Well, that happened. I rent workshop space in a group of buildings that, at one time, was the General Mills research and development complex (read about us in an online article linked here). Within is a secluded outdoor space we call the grotto. Two years ago, several hackberry trees had to be taken down. Because the grotto is a special place to me, I saved some smaller logs before they went into the chipper, hoping to resaw them into boards later on.

After considering several methods for resawing logs, I bought a Grizzly Industrial bandsaw sled this past summer. I used my 12" bandsaw with a Timber Wolf 3/8" 4TPI blade to resaw the logs into boards approximately 3/8" to 1/2" thick, breaking two blades in the process by tasking the bandsaw beyond their limit.

Since the grotto is a special place, I'd like to use the wood for something meaningful.

The Pluralist Pods Get Roofs

Autodesk Fusion renderings effectively communicate design assemblies and subassembly relationships.

If you can reasonably visualize something you want to make, you create dimensioned drawings and build it. If you don't understand, you prototype and iterate until you do. After deciding to emphasize object design and make something out of the ordinary, I extensively used renderings to prototype my vintage audio high-frequency driver pods before I began building them.

I found something unforseen while doing so. Renderings allowed me to understand construction processes without prototyping them in the workshop, saving time and the scarce lumber I had allocated to the project.

I also found that rendered subassemblies like the one included here on the right help me better understand their relationship to the main assembly, where I can divide a somewhat complex project into a series of subassembly builds.

The completed high-frequency driver pods with their angled roofs are shown in the photos here. I built the pods from scrap wood I had lying around. Red oak, jatoba, and mahogany were included.

The roof planks are trapezoidal in cross-section and alternate up-down with even spacing between them. I used black oxide screws to fasten everything together for an industrial look. Fusion provides added benefits, such as access to the McMaster-Carr catalog and its essential hardware components.

If you're interested in the finer points of speaker design, the center spacing between drivers should be no greater than the wavelength of the crossover frequency.

The Pluralists Get Pods

So they say blog posts are a thing of the past. My last post here was eight years ago. I used Instagram posts when I wanted to tell the story of some recently completed project work. It didn't take long to discover that Instagram was not the place to tell stories. I suddenly realized that this almost forgotten blog was. So let me say welcome back.

Nowadays, there is quite an interest in vintage audio. I became interested in it last spring when I bought a decades-old Harman Kardon receiver that closely resembled one I used to own. I designed and built a pair of small full-range speakers long ago and hooked them up to the Harman Kardon. Paired with the receiver, they absolutely sounded vintage.

 

Full-range speakers are known to have a problem. They extend mid-range frequencies. So, to correct the problem with mine, I made the speakers into bass units, added high-frequency drivers, and used off-the-shelf 2-way second-order crossover networks.

 

The high-frequency drivers needed small cabinets, which I designed and called pods. Their design was initially uncomplicated - too much so - so I reasoned that the pods created a design opportunity.

 

 

Work Life Tools

I purchased a book at the Weisman Art Museum some time ago titled Work, Life, Tools. by Milton Glasser. The book takes a look at the essential tools that a number of individuals use to accomplish daily tasks, and why they consider one special tool to be more important than any other in their daily lives and work.

Some of the tools that people identify with as most important to them are simple objects, and yet for some reason, that simple tool resonates with them in the way they use it to accomplish a particular task. The book caught my attention because there are things I build that stand out among the rest, and resonate beyond the simple tasks they were designed to accomplish. After some time, those projects are beginning to speak a common language, a philosophy that focuses on a list of well defined and essential aspects required of an object no matter what that object is used for, and then creatively interpreted through a specific design. Let me describe three very different projects in some detail that demonstrate this.


A BASIC KITCHEN CABINET

I built this cabinet during my early experience in woodworking to house kitchen plates and utensils during a time when I lived in a small studio apartment. The cabinet not only provides storage for kitchen items, but has casters so it can be positioned where needed while using the black Formica top as additional work space. The cabinet is sectioned into a space for larger plates and coffee cups. Utensils have their own drawer, and a separate space in front houses glassware and bowls. The unique design of the cabinet with its multiple compartments still makes it a favorite among friends. The cabinet has been in many places with me since I built it.

A ONE MANUAL CABINET PIPE ORGAN

Pipe organ building is still where I consider my best work is found. I built a total of three one-manual mechanical action pipe organs as an independent builder. One of them is pictured here. They each have no more than five voices, yet all provide exceptional function beyond any perceived limitation because those voices are vertically integrated in such a way that renders a surprising number of individual tonal possibilities. The organs of baroque southern Germany and France provide me with the conceptual basis for tonal design upon which tonal diversity is further generated in such small instruments. An organ built in this way does not have to dominate a musical setting, but rather contribute where most effective either alone or in combination with other instruments or voices.

A REAR DERAILLEUR EQUIPPED TRACK FRAME BUILT BICYCLE

When I bicycle ride in the city, I find that I almost never shift between the available front gears. So when I decided to build my own bike, I began with a light and agile single speed track frame, and added the necessary components to make it an urban commuter with a nine speed, rear derailleur only drivetrain. Using a mountain bike cassette rather than one intended for a road bike, I produced enough variability in gear ratio for almost any pedaling situation encountered with only one chainring and no derailleur up front. I built what a professional bike builder called my urban machine. The visceral experience of performance and simplicity are most important. Getting from one place to another is secondary.



SUMMARY

My design philosophy begins with some need expressed in the form of requirements that define an object in terms of its essential elements. I embrace disruptive change, and so my answer to a design problem is to often push beyond the expected. My work strives to maintain its focus on essential elements designed around an innovative solution which then produces an object that invites broader interaction between an individual using that object and the object itself. An individual who has his or her imagination further stimulated by the creative design of an object will further connect with that object as a result. That object becomes his or her favorite tool for work or life.

Storytelling

Good evening blog readers. Pipe organ building has been calling me back to it on and off for the past three years. I think that the time is right to seriously put some serious effort into exploring the possibility of building another instrument again.

To that end, I have produced a website for my workshop that focuses on the connection between my work as a studio woodworker and pipe organ builder. The website needs more work before it goes live, but one aspect that it will feature that is new to me is the concept of storytelling which puts my work in a sort of autobiographical context.

I can tell you this is not easy, but I think that I tell my story in a succinct way through a relatively new Microsoft app called Sway. This tool allows me to put my workshop photos together with text in a way that remarkably lets me tell the story of my work history online. I created three Sway stories that autobiographically tell the story of how I came full circle with regard to the possibility of pursuing cabinet organ building as a now part-time avocation.

Please take a look at the following, and let me know what you think. This is new for me. Posting photos is easy. Telling the stories behind them when it involves your thoughts and experiences is a bit more difficult.

- as a pipe organ builder with a music and engineering background.

- as a studio woodworker with a technology and organ building background.

- as a pipe organ builder with a studio woodworking background.