The Net Loft, Everett
The Penfield Works
Every Penfield Mk IV was made and tuned in the old net loft on the waterfront at Everett, beside the Works where the Nexus-6 was built. Production has been paused since 3 July 2026. Servicing has not.
The building
The net loft is a long timber building of 1924 on the same waterfront site as the Works, where fishing nets were once hung to dry and mended. The house bought it in 2022 and spent a year fitting it out under Constance Ebbing, a director of the Association, who came to the house from twenty-six years building aircraft interiors in Everett. It opened in August 2023.
| Staff | 171, of whom 132 work at the bench |
|---|---|
| Assembly | Two halls of forty-four benches each |
| Dial shop | Dials engraved by pantograph from Tobiah Wren’s steel master of 2022 |
| Tuning | Nine tuning rooms, built as copies of the Penfield Room at the House; 37 tuners |
| Service bay | Receives instruments from keepers by mail and returns them, usually within eight working days |
What it made
| Year | Instruments |
|---|---|
| 2024, from April | 18,600 |
| 2025 | 34,900 |
| 2026, to 3 July | 7,912 |
| Total | 61,412 |
Tuning
Each instrument was tuned by hand by a single tuner, who set each of the forty-eight registers against a reference instrument kept in the room and signed the instrument’s tuning card. A tuner tunes three or four instruments in a working day. The tuning rooms are paneled, quiet and kept at the temperature of a bedroom, because that is where the instrument will be used.
Since the suspension
Production stopped on 3 July 2026, the day the Turing Registry suspended the license. Nobody at the Works has been laid off. The assembly staff now handle servicing and the refunds the house has offered keepers, and the tuners retune, without charge, any instrument a keeper sends in. The Works reports to the Court each month on its readiness to resume, and will not resume until the Registry’s audit has said what the instrument should be.
Sending an instrument
Write first to penfield@rosenassociation.org with the certificate number engraved on the base; the house will send a padded case and a prepaid label. Instruments are addressed to: The Penfield Works, The Net Loft, 1151 Marine View Road, Everett, Washington 98201. The Works is not open to visitors.