antique wooden organ pipemaking tools, 'lip flatting mandrels'

I've shown some of my 'specialized' pipe organ tools here before at various times, but don't think I've ever shown these -- so here they are. They are two conical mandrels turned of solid hardwood, each has one side planed off where a plate of phosphor bronze (probably) has been attached firmly to the wood. Each has a flatted 'stem' at its wide end that would clamp into a jig or hole made in a workbench edge, to hold it securely with its 'pointy end' facing out (and usually up) for use.

Their purpose is to form the 'mouth parts' of organ pipes when they are being made. To look at a typical organ pipe, there are smallish open horizontal 'slits' near their bottom (inverted conical) portions where the otherwise curved shape of the tubular pipe flattens out to where that slit is -- we call that whole area of the pipe its "mouth" and, in fact, that part of it is where the physics 'magic' happens to make it produce an audible sound when air is blown through it. When pipes are first made (from flat sheets of metal otherwise formed into tubes around long dowel-shaped mandrels, using other simple sorts of tools, by hand) these tools are used to create that flatted section near their ends, using a burnisher (or etc) to form the pipe metal to their shape instead, again by hand. Their general conical shape allows them to be used for any original diameter of pipe 'tube' up to the widest part of each mandrel. These are only two examples of moderate size -- a real pipe shop will have many of these ranging from a few inches to a foot or more long with a variety of proportionally different sized flat portions to them (vs. the round diameter) in order to create larger or smaller 'flat widths' needed for various specific types and sizes of pipes.

Pipeshop tools like these are seldom (never) mass-produced things purchased from suppliers, instead they are also hand crafted in organ shops according to need. As such they usually get 'passed on' from original maker to successive users/owners over decades worth of time, that is how I got them when purchasing a storage locker-ful of 'old organ stuff' along with most of my other antique organ tools. I have no reason to believe these are any less than antique by definition, it is also quite possible they are much older, I was never able to determine exactly who might have owned and/or used them or where, before they made their way into my own custody. I now consider myself only their 'caretaker' for now, it is unlikely I'll ever actually need to use them myself, but with any luck they will eventually find their own way to yet another organbuilder craftsman once I'm dead and gone. :-)