my generally most-reached-for pipe organ tuning tools

It occurred to me, since in fact I used several of these today (for the first time in a little too long...thanks stupid virus thing...) that although I've shown some of my more obscure "pipe organ tools" already, I've otherwise never shown the ones I use the most regularly. So HERE THEY ARE. :-) :-) :-)

Most of these would also commonly be called "tuning knives", though none of them are nearly sharp enough anywhere to cut much of anything. Instead they are all intended, with their variously shaped hooks, holes, grooves, and grindings, to serve to make minute adjustments to individual organ pipes (which often can't be seen by the eye but can definitely be heard?!) via either little metal 'tuning collars' or 'tuning wires' which nearly all varieties of organ pipes inherently have fitted to them somewhere. These tools are used to (usually...the bigger the pipes get sometimes requires bigger whacks and/or tools) gently tap whatever sort of 'tuning thing' any pipe has a little way up or down, to adjust its own pitch to match all its neighbors.

All of these except the 2-part brass one at the top of the pics are actually commercially manufactured tools still (for the most part) available for purchase today ifn's you know where to order them from. (you won't find 'em in a hardware store, that is...prolly not on Amazon either?) That company is the German firm of August Laukhuff GMBH, their marks can plainly be seen on all the 'silver colored' ones here. Amongst those are a few different 'generations' of the same basic tools made by the same folks, the slightly heavier gauge ones being a few decades older than the similar ones of the same general configuration. The one with the black plastic covered handle is from another USA common supplier to our trade, Organ Supply Industries, and is in fact the one of all these I tend to use the most. The brass one BTW, is really 2pcs I made myself -- its parts fasten together to allow me double the reach to things otherwise not gettable and its design was inspired by another (completely unique and quite a bit cruder, sorry dude...) example that one of my bosses made for himself long ago from a screen-door turnbuckle-holdie-together thing, and has since lost the '2nd handle end part' of. <giggle>

OHH -- I nearly forgot to add -- these are pictured here on another completely antique "pipe organ part" -- a thing we call a "toeboard" which was once part of another thing we call a "windchest". The long story short of all that is every one of its blackish tapered holes once had an individual organ pipe sitting atop it...those holes do transfer to the underside of what looks like a solid wooden board but isn't, it is in reality a whole sandwichy assembly of channeling and boring such that the holes on its bottom come out in a *completely different* way than how they're arranged on the top.