Spring Feet Revision

It was pointed out to me on the Busker Organ Forum, that the reservoir spring "feet" that I had made out of dowel pins had a couple of potential problems:

1. There was nothing to keep the dowels from sliding sideways and having the spring go flying out
2. A smooth dowel surface might be preferable to one with ridges like those on the dowel pins
3. Some sort of lubrication would be needed to keep the dowels from squeaking

With these things in mind, I revised the spring feet, making them more of a dumbbell shape so that they would not slide off the mounting blocks. I also filed a groove near the spring wire insertion hole so that the spring would not swivel sideways.

Here's a view of the new feet:

Here's how it looks in cross-section, using an off-cut scrap of the mounting block:

And here are the new feet - stained and in place:

One further revision…

Since the wood of the spring dowel feet squeaked a little when it rotated on the wood mounting blocks, I decided to put on a couple of drops of mineral oil for lubricant. This only made it squeak even worse.

To eliminate the wood-on-wood friction, I cut and split a couple of pieces of brass tubing and clipped them on the feet…. No more squeaks!