I was thinking that if I mounted the bonker mechanism directly on the resonator pipe, the hammer shaft would need to be pretty long to accommodate most of them. So I came up with the idea of a hammer arm pivoting on risers that straddle the tone bar. I'd have to engineer the actuator, but the possibilities are pretty vast.
This is a placeholder for the John Smith Busker Organ.
Plans available here: John Smith Organs - Busker
These are views of the Thomas Orchestra Bells as I received the instrument. I was disappointed by the synthetic casework, but discussing it with other folks it made sense for a mass-produced object from Thomas Organ Company. The design is super simple with a row of solenoids below the tone bars. It didn't use return springs, relying on gravity to drop the striker back into the coil.
I was lucky to find this Thomas Orchestra Bells organ module on eBay, but I was unhappy with the condition of the case. I also wanted a glockenspiel to go with the street organ, so I rebuilt it and arranged the tone bars the same way as the melody pipes.
🎶This is the way we make the springs, make the springs, make the springs!🎶
Here's an overview of how I fabricated the striker action return springs. The striker actions were made from salvaged upright piano dampers. It was very handy that they had return springs, but those springs were too stiff and brittle for our purposes. Here's a picture of damper arms with the original springs:
This is one of the early mock-ups -- I have a rudimentary windchest mounted in a frame with the double-action bellows, reservoir, spring, and air distribution.
Here we see some pallet valves I made out of solenoids. I fabricated the stoppers with oak dowel and window foam punchings, and I fabricated the mounting plates for the solenoids. This worked okay, but it was hard to balance the noise with the sealing effectiveness.