I second Bill FInch's request in Digest 980624 for any references on
designing (scaling, etc.) and building organ pipes, especially wooden.

I've seen blueprints for "monkey" organs that implied that you merely
had to cut the pieces per the drawings, glue them together, and presto,
the pipes would sound properly.  My experience many years ago with
balsa wood pipes suggests otherwise -- you have to do some adjustment
of the mouth parts' placement before the glue sets up to get a good
sound (or any sound at all).

About scaling -- one thing I remember is that any rank of pipes gets
"fatter" as it goes up the scale, and different types of ranks (flute,
diapason, string) take varying numbers of semitones up the scale before
their diameter cuts in half.  Since the number of semitones seems
always to be greater than 12 (typically around 16 - 18?), the pipes get
fatter as you go up (or skinnier as you go down) the scale.

If the diameters halved every 12 semitones (one octave), the trebles
would be too thin and wispy, and the basses too thick and "tubby."

Pipe making would make a great instructional videotape -- but probably
wouldn't sell many copies.

Mike Knudsen