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fairorgan uploaded a new video
(3 weeks ago)
Video 3 showing my 38-key vintage Dutch Street Organ, built by Catri Opdam from Zwolle, Holland, the town having a famous tower De Toren after whic...
more
Video 3 showing my 38-key vintage Dutch Street Organ, built by Catri Opdam from Zwolle, Holland, the town having a famous tower De Toren after which this organ was named.
The organ came to England in the early 1970s, and I purchased it in 2001. After completing a full restoration on the organ during 2002/3 I built the new display trailer, and since then have been taking the organ out to enliven many public and private events across the English Midlands and Wales regions.
For more information please see my website www.fairgroundorgan.com (update coming soon)
Video filmed during a very cold day in January 2009.
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fairorgan uploaded a new video
(3 weeks ago)
Video 2, showing period cardboard music being played on my 38-key vintage Dutch Street Organ, built by Catri Opdam from Zwolle, Holland, the town h...
more
Video 2, showing period cardboard music being played on my 38-key vintage Dutch Street Organ, built by Catri Opdam from Zwolle, Holland, the town having a famous tower De Toren after which this organ was named.
The organ came to England in the early 1970s, and I purchased it in 2001. After completing a full restoration on the organ during 2002/3 I built the new display trailer, and since then have been taking the organ out to enliven many public and private events across the English Midlands and Wales regions.
For more information please see my website www.fairgroundorgan.com (update coming soon)
Video filmed during a very cold day in January 2009.
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fairorgan uploaded a new video
(3 weeks ago)
Video 1 showing my 38-key vintage Dutch Street Organ, built by Catri Opdam from Zwolle, Holland, the town having a famous tower De Toren after whic...
more
Video 1 showing my 38-key vintage Dutch Street Organ, built by Catri Opdam from Zwolle, Holland, the town having a famous tower De Toren after which this organ was named.
The organ came to England in the early 1970s, and I purchased it in 2001. After completing a full restoration on the organ during 2002/3 I built the new display trailer, and since then have been taking the organ out to enliven many public and private events across the English Midlands and Wales regions.
For more information please see my website www.fairgroundorgan.com (update coming soon)
Video filmed during a very cold January 2009.
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fairorgan uploaded a new video
(3 weeks ago)

A brief overview video of my computer controlled punching machine made as a university project to automatically make perforated cardboard music boo...
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A brief overview video of my computer controlled punching machine made as a university project to automatically make perforated cardboard music books for mechanical fairground and street organs in my collection.
Footage was shot in Summer 2007 but until now never released; since then the machine has been working for me faultlessly, now operating at well over twice the speed you see in this video without risking accuracy. It has saved me many hours of laboriously manually punching music by each hole at a time, which I used to have to do with a sewing-machine like treadle operated punch, having first marked the positions of each hole on the card using a printed master roll of paper. This traditional way of producing organ books is still widely used today, but is incredible labour intensive.
More details of construction of my machine will be published on my website in the near future, but the actual punching and alignment mechanism I came up with is unique, totally unlike any existing CNC punching machine, and having numerous advantages over any other design I have decided to keep this out of the public domain.
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fairorgan uploaded a new video
(3 weeks ago)

My current car restoration project...
From 1933 to 1936, Raleigh of Nottingham, the world-famous bicycle and motorcycle manufacturer, branched into ...
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My current car restoration project...
From 1933 to 1936, Raleigh of Nottingham, the world-famous bicycle and motorcycle manufacturer, branched into car production. Named the Safety Seven, 3000 economical 3-wheel cars were produced using a 742cc air-cooled V-Twin engine and gearbox made by Sturmey Archer. After 1936 the design was taken over by Tom Williams and formed into the Reliant, which continued making 3-wheel cars and vans until the late 1990s.
Only a handful of these original Raleigh cars now survive, but my example is believed to be totally unique. It is a 4-wheeler put together in the period as a race/trials car. The chassis is a one-off constructed from angle iron, two pieces welded together for those lengths that needed to be of box section, and the steel body supported by a wooden frame wraps completely underneath for aero efficiency. Both engine and gearbox remain in standard form, but have slightly tuned for performance and sit much further forward than on the production car, hence the remote gearchange linkage. The standard diff has been locked and modified to act as just a 90 degree drive gearbox sited just behind the cockpit and uses a single sprocket chain-drive to the solid rear axle, this being mounted using quarter-elliptic springs to maintain constant chain tension.
The car had been laid up in a barn for many years in the Chepstow area. An enthusiast is known to have acquired it and commenced restoration work during the 1980s, but he passed away before finishing. The car was advertised in a local newspaper in the mid 1990s and bought by a vintage car and motorcycle collector in Abergavenny. He completed some further work, but not yet to the point of having it running, and the car was mothballed for the next ten years in the back of his garage. I purchased the car in early 2009, and after wiring and refurbishing the engine have brought it back to life to the point shown in this video. Im presently completing work on the clutch and drive train, so hopefully it should soon be drivable (watch this space). Some cosmetic work (paint, seats, dashboard etc) should then complete this little fun car.
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