Restoration of a Bush & Lane/Welte for Kim Davis
73) 
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73) Now it is time to restore the pump. This is a
before picture from the front.
74) Another shot from the back.
75) A close up after the drive wheel was removed.
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76) A close up of the spider. The connecting rods are
made of shellac soaked cloth. This is a very free moving and silent design. I
much prefer the design of this pump over many of the other more sophisticated units.
Both the Amphion (Ampico) design and the Aeolian (Duo-Art) use much more complex
pumps with much more complex bearings. They also both can have a tendency to thump;
especially the Amphion. The Amphion must have incredibly tight cloth bushings at
both ends of the connecting rods or it will thump. This makes the pump's motion very
stiff. The Welte design has no such difficulty. However, these connecting rods
have worn out and new ones will have to be made.
77) Now the pump has been torn down. All the valves have been releathered as
needed and the pouches replaced. The outside flap valves are new as are their
leather seats. You can see the white flap valves in this photo on the freshly
recovered pneumatics. The hinge ends have not yet been covered because the glue must
set solidly so that the pneumatics can be clamped shut before gluing down the hinges.
This prevents them from becoming stiff in their operation. All the external
surfaces of the pump have also been repainted and the internal air chambers freshly
sealed. The internal flap valves were in excellent condition and actually more air
tight than any new leather I could have used would have made them. Therefore, I
retained those inner flap valves. Again, as I've said before, I never keep any
leather that is at all suspect. However, the inner flap valves were in perfect,
perfect condition and made of superior leather.
78) The freshly restored pneumatics have been reconnected to the spider with the new
connecting cloths. You will note new leather gaskets have been installed on the
pneumatics as seen in this photo. In the original design, the leather gaskets had
only been narrow strips and had been attached with hide glue on one side and sealed with
shellac on the other. This made it necessary to ruin the gaskets any time the pump
needed to be taken apart. This is a typical thing to see in pumps made by this
company. However, I wanted the pump to be serviceable without destroying the gaskets
or breaking the owner's wallet. So, I made the new gaskets incredibly huge in
comparison to the originals. This made it possible to assemble the pump using the
screws only. The pump can be taken easily apart at any time without any difficulty
whatsoever. It did require a considerable expense on my part because of the vast
amount of leather it required to do this but it is worth it to save future difficulty for
other rebuilders and for the owner.
79) 
80) 
81) 
79) The suction manifold assembly is assembled with all new
gaskets. It is also completely repainted and freshly sealed inside. the
pneumatics slip inside of this assembly and are screwed to it.
80) The finished pump. The bearings were thoroughly cleaned and greased; the
spill valve re-leathered and re-gasketed; the suction manifold releathered and
re-gasketed. Also, one of the nipples off the top suction manifold was made of pot
metal and was totally rotten. It was replaced with a brass nipple that will not give
any future trouble.
81) This is a photo of the drawer before work began. The mechanisms inside
this component are all associated with the "user interface."
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82) On this side of the drawer we have the on/off switch and
the valve/pneumatic which automatically shuts that switch off. We also have the wind
motor governor which stabilizes the speed at which the roll motor runs and adjust the
tempo of the music. Also we have the play/rewind valve/pneumatic assembly.
Finally this side of the drawer contains the tracker mechanism that keeps the roll
centered over the tracker bar. Also, inside the drawer are all the brass selector
switches which allow the user to choose between shutting down at the completion of a roll
or replaying the roll; allowing the damper pedal to operate or not; allowing the unit to
recognize Welte expression rolls or to play standard 88 note rolls; there are controls to
adjust play/rewind manually and to adjust the tempo of the music.
83) The primary pneumatic device on this (the left) side of the drawer is the wind
motor that spins the roll over the tracker bar. The two levers are for controlling
the expression manually.
84) This is a photo from the back of the drawer before work began. This shows
all the old rubber tubing is still in place. However, the tubing is all bad and must
be replaced.
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85) This is a close up of the tracker bar at the center of
the drawer. It shows all the bits of tubing that are still attached to the nipples
after the rest had been removed. The tubing was so brittle it was impossible to pull
the tubes off the nipples; they had to be broken off.
86) The underside of the drawer before the cover boards were removed. Someone
had attempted to make the drawer match the rest of the piano when it was refinished last.
They painted all of the outer parts of the drawer with brown paint which had to be
redone. The proper, original, color would have been black on these boards.
87) The drawer is now totally taken apart and each individual component can now be
disassembled and rebuilt.
88) 
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88) The motor governor before it was rebuilt.
89) The motor governor restored.
90) The wind motor before work began.
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93) 
91) The wind motor taken apart and the various components
re-sealed.
92) All the parts to the wind motor are now rebuilt and ready to be put back
together.
93) The trunk board from the other side showing the layout lines for re-gluing the
pneumatics into place. The internal air chambers of the board have all been
re-sealed. Also, the pneumatics (which were never sealed originally) have been
sealed on the inside to make the motor as air tight as possible. This type of motor
makes a bit more noise than other types (like the Amphion) so it is important that it be
air tight and well bushed to ensure that it work as well as possible to minimize the
noise.
94) 
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96) 
94) Gluing the pneumatics back onto the trunk.
95) The completed wind motor.
96) The tracking device before it was rebuilt. This is just about the most
difficult device to rebuild in all of the player piano world. It is sufficiently
complex inside that it will refuse to work unless everything is done perfectly.
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97) The restored tracking device.
98) The play/rewind device before restoration.
99) Play/rewind restored.
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Reserved.