Week 33 - April 30th - May 4th

Welcome back. It's been a few weeks since the last post. We've finished the program and graduated away. Here are a few little finishing notes.

In the beginning of the week we modified our swedging tool to make it easier to work. By turning down the length of the tool, we could add a bearing that reduced friction.

Back to the crack pinning, we continued to sand and polish the bodies to blend in the patches. Using oils and sharpies, we blend the colors as best as possible.

Finally, to finish up the roller I chucked the outside of the roller on the mini-lathe and polished all of the machine marks out of it. After quite a while of polishing, I used loc-tite to glue the bearings to the inner-rod and the tube. After setting overnight, she is good to use.

It has been quite the year. I will try to post occasionally whenever something fantastic comes through the shop, or when I make any new tools. Thanks to Red Wing for everything. If you have any questions or comments, email me at airbandrepair@gmail.com.

Week 32 - April 23rd - 27th

With saxophones done, we move onto oboes in the woodwind lab. We begin as always by making a screw board for disassembly, and tear it apart. We went through and began to examine all of the mechanisms that are unique to the oboe. The wonderful thing about woodwinds is that once you begin to understand the mechanics of one, they all begin make sense. All of the basic systems are the same or similar and we deal with them in the same way.

We also began corking oboes this week. Oboes are one of the few instruments with cork pads. Unlike bladder pads, cork does not bend around distortions and leaks in the tone-holes. We check with a feeler gauge that is 0.0005" thick and adjust to tolerances within that. So to ensure we have a good seal, we must first prep the tone-holes so they are perfectly level. We then bevel and face the pad to seal properly in the key. If the pad protrusion is correct, the key seals pretty easily.

We revisited our clarinet tenon sleeve this week. To finish this off, we first chucked our first tenon in the lathe as if it was a real clarinet, leaving the cork on and all of the posts. We then faced off what would be the damaged tenon and sized it to receive a sleeve. To make the sleeve, we drilled out a piece of 1" ABS with a 3/4" drill. After fine tuning the inside to accept the tenon, we turned the outside down to size and cut a cork groove. Once we cut it off, it was ready to be glued on. We did not glue these particular ones on, but if we did we would then face off the excess sleeve in a lathe and create a pretty good tenon replica.

 We began experimenting with crack pinning this week. Though we did not have a bunch of cracked tenons, we put a big scratch in some junky clarinet bodies and pretended. To begin, we drilled holes in the body underneath the crack at varying angles. The hole must not go into the bore of the instrument or pop out of the body on the other side. Once the holes are drilled, we burn heat threaded rod and burn thread it into the body, snapping it off at a break point once we are at depth. We then grind the excess rod off with a grinding wheel.

After this, the crack is pinned and should not open again. This does not close the crack, it only holds a crack that you have already closed. Now comes the artsy part. Using super glue and grenadilla dust, we fill the holes and cracks in the body and file it flush. Using a varying degree of files, sand paper, and buffing compounds, we can blend these patches in so that they are invisible to the untrained eye. I will revisit this project next week as I continue to blend in the patches.

Finally, we got some bassoons to take home over the weekend. This is the last instrument we will discuss in class as next week is our last. We have already made screw-boards for them, so this weekend is all about tearing them down and putting them back together, checking out the regulation and mechanics along the way.

Week 31 - April 16th - 20th

This week has been a really good work week for us in the woodwind lab. We are still working on our project saxophones and they are due on Monday. So to start this week, I went through and leveled tone-holes. We do this by using a flat bit with a diamond stone paper on it to remove material from the tone-hole. Once they are all perfectly level, the pads are much easier to seal.

After the tone-holes were leveled, I glued in all of the pads and began leveling them. The pad cups were already leveled during the key fitting process, so padding was pretty easy for the most part. Instead of using a feeler gauge, we use leak lights on saxophone to determine if and where the pad is leaking.

 After the padding was completed, I went ahead and glued up a bunch of cork for feet and articulations. Contact cement needs to cure for at least 15 min per coat, so while the glue was setting up, I straightened the neck and removed the few dents that were in there. With all of the corks glued on, I began the regulation process.

The last thing I did this week was to replace the neck cork. Much like tenon corks, we bevel and soften the cork before gluing it on. Once in place, the cork is shaped and sized for the mouth piece. The difficult thing about it is that the neck is tapered and we want a cylindrical cork. Once in the proper shape, the cork is sealed with paraffin wax and cork grease. 

On a final note, according to spectators our Pine Car did not lose any of the match-ups this weekend. After all of the total times were added up, our car placed 4th overall. Next week we finish our saxophones and begin work on oboes.