Here it is, varnished and felted, with the felt still to trim. I’m pleased with how well the colour matches the existing veneer; not bad for what was essentially guesswork.

And here it is in situ. It will need to be screwed to the keyframes, but I’m not feeling brave enough for that yet.

Still awaiting the mesh from surfacescan.co.uk, which should be here in the next week or so. In the meantime I am working on a prototype of the interstitial converter board, which takes the matrix output from the rocker tabs and turns it into 32 discrete signals (16 for on, 16 for off) which the BBS1K can understand.

Here it is, prior to stain and varnish.

I have finished staining and varnishing, and it looks quite good. Photo in the next installment.

There are several sub-projects on the go:

• Finishing the panel (drilling and felting). This depends on there being a warm, sunny day when I’m not at work. Possibly next weekend.
• Replacement rocker tabs. I have sent a sample off to surfacescan.co.uk, and I am awaiting the finished mesh (probably a couple of weeks). I think they will be able to produce my new tabs, too.
• Interstitial circuit. I need to convert the tab board matrix output into discrete ouputs, using a SOC and some ‘555 chips. This is the project currently burning holes in my brain.

Still, it’s good to be busy, I am told.

I have been preoccupied with house maintenance for the last few weeks (and playing with my shiny! new! car!). There will be another update on the organ soon, once the toe pistons are returned and plugged in again. And I still have to tell you all about the rocker tabs.

A sage once said, “If you have not tested your backups, then you have no backups.”

‘Nuff said.