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Leo · Looking for: Woman, 55–75
Hello!
I'm a retired pipe organ builder from Dobson Pipe Organ Builders in Lake City, 34 years. There is a good bio of me at Dobson's web site (www.dobsonorgan.com). Go to "Our Shop", then "Staff", and find me in the list, Arthur Middleton. Art or Arthur, you choose. After 2 years of Iowa State, 1970-72, I worked at a few jobs and took an apprenticeship in renaissance lute making '74. Made 11 lutes, all different and historically accurate. Then, in '76 I was at Kirkwood Comm. College, taking the 9 month machinist course. That got me in the door to a very good metal machining job, and, after nearly 12 years, I left to work for Dobson Pipe Organ Builders. Right from the very first day, my extensive machining background helped to bring some of the manufacturing processes to current industrial standards. To make a very long story just a little shorter, I made the console chassis for mechanical key action pipe organs. This includes the keyboards (from Germany, unfinished), all of the couplers, etc.- everything to make the organ's key action play. Completely mechanical and quite complex. Add to that I helped with wood pipe construction, the stop action and, of course, the key action. Over the years, very professional aluminum and steel production jigs were made for every applicable part of the organs. Then, came June 15, 2020. The entire shop and offices burned to the ground, a 100% total loss. All of the jigs and absolutely everything else was completely destroyed! I retired in the fall of '20. Still am involved a bit as needed. I've turned the stopped organ pipe wooden handles for tuning since '97 in my shop across the street from where I live. There are 2 different sizes in production now (10 sizes total), but my main project at the moment is replacing the cedar siding on the east side of the house with new cedar siding, a huge job. I do have one cat, Xero, 11. An excellent orange cat!
I exercise 5 days a week at the local fitness center. I'm now, at 73, much more muscular than I've ever been in my life. My MD says that, for my age, I'm in superb health. I quite drinking beer over 10 years ago and am alcohol free and don't use tobacco products either.
