 Portland's Kochmore Organ is undergoing a two-year renovation. Kathleen Grammer, Executive Director of the Friends of the Kochmore Organ, gave us a behind-the-scenes look at the work that's being done in Merrill Auditorium to prepare for the organ's return. Kathleen, we're here in the wind chest, the lungs of the Kochmore Organ. Most of the organ is away and Connecticut being repaired, but there's still some parts of it that are here that are being worked on. What's going on? Well, Phil Carpenter, who's a clerk of the works here, is working on moving the new air box or wind chest walls around. They put the sprinkler system in the ceiling, and so they have to move the walls back, and so that's basically what they're doing here. Measuring and also painting the Echo Division, which is above the Auditorium audience portion, and getting that ready to put some things back in. But most of the organ is in Tallinn, Connecticut. And what's being done to it down there? A total professional renovation. They're washing and fixing and tuning all the pipes, and every piece of the organ has come apart and is being worked on. It's quite a job. When will it be done and when will it be back here in the Merrill Auditorium? We're told that it will be functional in September of 2014. So we have a little ways to go, but you're doing some other programs elsewhere throughout the community, throughout the state with Ray Isaac, right? That's right. We have a huge education program, and our next concert will be Meet the King of Instruments, our youth concert at Loranger School in Old Orchard Beach. They have a whirlitzer pipe organ on their stage in the gymnasium that Ray has used with our in-school program, Kochmore for Kids. Philip Carpenter, Director of Field Services for Foley Baker, talked about the repairs being done to the very heart of the organ. Phil, you're doing a lot of reconstruction here today on the wind chest, and what does the wind chest do? In the Austin organ, the universal wind chest is what it's called, and it holds all the air for the organ, and it allows you to virtually walk into the organ while it's playing, and you'll be when the organ is operating, this chest will be full of air, and you'll be able to watch the actions work above you, and if there's a problem, you can repair it. Whereas on most other organs, you have to take hundreds of screws out sometimes just to open it, try to fix something, put it back together and try it, and it may not work. So Austin organ just made it very easy to work on their instruments. Does the wind chest work like a lung, like a human lung? It really just fills with air behind us on the wall. There's these bellows, and that's the lungs. Those will expand, and they're all sprung load. There's 122 springs on each reservoir, and as you play the organ, the bellows will collapse and allow more air into the organ. It's what regulates the organ. And what are you doing here today? You're moving some walls around to make the wind chest bigger. What we've done is we've actually duplicated the original air chest. In the 1990s move, they cut 18 inches off the top of this box, and it was in such bad shape that we decided to just build a new one rather than try to repair the old one. And since we were doing that, we decided to go back up another 18 inches to make it to make it higher and easier to service and everything. So what you see here right now is most of the boxes in place. We've just got one to we've got five more wall sections to put in today. And I see there are some metal pipes here that still remain, but there are also some new wooden pipes that have been installed. Most people don't think of an organ as having wood pipes. They only see the metal ones, but what are the wood pipes for? The wood pipes are basically the subwoofers of the organ, at least these on the wall here. These are the 32 foot pitch. The organ does have wood pipes that they have tiny wood pipes. I mean, some of the wood pipes will be this big. The what most people see is the facade of the organ, which is the metal pipes that you see here. And they think that is the organ. They don't realize that there is a huge room behind that is filled with thousands of pipes made of all different types of materials. There's a zinc and spotted metal. Sometimes this copper, you've got wood and all kinds of variations of lead and combinations of lead. So the the pipe metal, the type of metal will affect the tone quality. And it's what gives you the color of the various stops of the organ. How do you keep track of all those little parts? It's all here. Well, the one thing that you have to remember is these organs, all of these organs were originally built in a factory. And they assemble them in the factory. Sometimes they played them Austin didn't, but some organ companies would actually play the organ in the factory. And then they would have to take it all apart and move it to its to its final resting place. And this one is no different. So when they built it in the factory, everything is everything is labeled, everything is numbered, it's really a big jigsaw puzzle. So if you have a basic understanding of what you're looking at, you can you can put them back all the pipes have their their note stamped on them. And just about everything, you kind of go off a map. There's a base a simple floor plan of the organ. And that tells you where the various ranks of pipes will go. And from there, all the pipes are labeled. And all these individual parts, if you start taking an organ apart, you will see labels all over the place as to what went where. So far, the repairers seem to be on track for the organs gallery turn in the fall of 2014. For more information about the organ, go to f o k o dot org