Weeks 9 and 10 - October 17th - 28th

These last two weeks have been a complete reset in the instrument repair classroom. We have now completely submerged ourselves into woodwind repair, and there has been a lot of prep work involved as we learn our way around the clarinet. The first few days have been all about tool prep and nomenclature. First off, we created a clarinet screw board to help us organize hinge rods and screws as we disassembled. It was a very easy, but very necessary tool to make. 

After our boards were made, we began to disassemble and reassemble practice clarinets. I have been working on a mid-70's Yamaha YCL61 student clarinet. This particular clarinet has both standard pointed pivot screws and headless pointed pivot screws, as well as pinned E/B and F#/C# Levers.

We then began to learn how to install foot corks on keys. As I have learned, corking is an art, not a craft. When corking, we use contact cement to secure the uncut cork on the key, and then trim it to size. We try to cut the cork in one motion with the razor blade to avoid any lips or tears. In addition, we typically don't sand the cork to fit the outside of the key because it leaves the cork looking faded. This problem is further compounded by the issue of only getting 2-3 cuts per razor blade before it starts tearing the cork rather than cutting smooth. It's quite the trick.

We have been making and modifying tools these last couple of weeks. The tool below may not look like much, but it is a feeler gauge. Basically a piece of Mylar film hot glued to a stick, the feeler gauge is a tool that lets us find leaks in padding so that we can readjust for a perfect fit. Cheap, dirty, and effective.

 As far as our tool modifications have gone, most of what we have been doing is cleaning up the factory tool marks on our swedging pliers, pad slicks and duckbill pliers. Most of the factory tools that we have are quickly made and have machining marks everywhere. So we spent a couple of days sanding and buffing our tools so they do not damage any of the instruments we are working on.

Much of our time these last two weeks have been spent in lecture, rather than working on instruments. We have explored key fitting and straightening, alignment, venting and regulation. While I may not have much to show for it right now, what we have been learning will become apparent on our project clarinets, which I hope we will get next week. Stay tuned.

Week Eight - October 10th - 14th

The final week of Brass has come and gone, and our project trumpets are finally done. This week has been all about assembly and final playability. I began this week by attaching my new mouthpiece. The casing to mouthpipe brace was fit and installed first, followed by the two S braces connecting the mouthpipe to the bell. It was important to ensure that the fit did not put any stress on the mouthpipe as it would effect tone production.

While installing the mouthpipe, I found a crack in the main tuning slide crook. It was small, but had to be patched.

Next, I turned my attention to the damaged casing threads. We were not to cover casing repair on piston brass until after Christmas, but because it is one of the only things I had left to do, I skipped ahead in the work a bit. Using dent balls, I brought the casings back to round. While this fixed all of the issues with the 2nd and 1st casings, the 3rd was still too badly damaged. Using a Ferree's Thread Burnisher, I managed to bring the threads almost completely back to shape. To finish it up, I used an Allied Thread Chaser to cut away any excess material that was slowing the threading down. This brought it back to perfect.

 As a quick aside, there was a mouthpiece in the case when I received the trumpet that was slightly damaged on the rim and shank. In under 10 minutes, I restored the roundness to the shank, burnished the damage out of the rim, and polished the mouthpiece to a shiny silver. It's the little things that customers notice.

 I prepped the horn for lacquering. This meant buffing any areas where I was soldering. I buffed with a white cut-buff compound that is relatively low on the shinyness scale and won't leave a mirror finish. The reason I used this was to match the rest of the trumpet's finish. The horn was degreased with orange cleaners and lacquered.

 As my lacquer was drying, I was given a very odd assignment. A woman in the bookstore brought in an antique pendent and asked if we could clean it up for her. So, I took the pendent and chem flushed it, first with detergent, then through the ultra sonic machine (which was super cool), and finally with silver dip. While this restored it quite a bit, it still needed a little work. So I polished it with silver polish and ran it through the ultra sonic once more. This was my finished product.

 After finishing the polish, we brought the pendant to Todd Hawkinson in our jewelry repair department. Surprisingly, he buffed it with the same compounds that we use, just on a smaller scale. He gave us a quick tour of his department and you would be amazed at how similar the two programs are. So after swapping some quick trade secrets, he brought the pendant back to brilliant. Check out the Jewelry Repair Programs here.

Meanwhile, back in brass land, my lacquer is now dry and assembly has begun. Each slide was tested and any that were sluggish were re-examined and lapped as needed. The water keys were reinstalled and re-corked with neoprene pads and Yamaha springs. The pistons were ported and tested, in which I found the third casing was slightly out of round on the bottom end. A quick burnish with a mandrel and a few hammer hits brought it back to running smooth. Everything was greased, oiled and wiped, the case was vacuumed and the horn was play tested. Everything passed and the invoice was written up. Final cost - $250 at tech school prices. In reality, it would be a bit more. Because this is an instructional horn, we actually zeroed the price out and it will be returned to our affiliate at no cost.

Soon I will post a page dedicated to this trumpet, outlining the process a little more in depth and the steps I took as they came. If you want any more information or want to share opinions and insight, feel free to leave comments or email me at airbandrepair@gmail.com.  Cheers.

Week Seven - October 3rd - 7th

There is only one week left to finish our project trumpets and there is so much left to do. This week was a very busy week for me, and it involved a lot of custom work. The trumpet that I am restoring is a 1964 Cleveland-made Reynolds, and unfortunately they do not make parts for these trumpets anymore. As we go along, you will see the problems this created for me. Beginning with my damaged second slide…

The second slide on a trumpet tends to stick out a little further than any other slide, which leads to serious denting issues. On this trumpet, it was completely crushed in. Normally, we would simply replace the crook. But because of the odd dimensions of the crook, and the unavailability of a new crook, I was forced to reform it using some methods that are more aggressive than usual. Due to the severity of the dent, the crook was left cracked and mangled after removing the heavier damage. To fix this, I cut the top section off of a larger crook and made it into a patch, which you will see later.

To make things more interesting, the crook lost its draw knob in the crash, and a new one had to be fashioned. This was done on the lathe. Because of the style of knob, a 0.020” flange was left on its base to be form fit to the crook. Both the knob and the patch were wired onto the crook and the whole assembly was soldered at once. 

 Continuing with custom part making, this trumpet arrived missing two of its bottom caps. I would like to thank Badger State Repair for offering to help find some new caps for me, but when I mailed the part to them for comparison the package was damaged and the part was lost. So to make things easier, we found that Bundy bottom caps would fit on the Reynolds trumpet and had a similar design. They just needed to be modified. To do this, we made a jig with a N° 36 thread on it to hold the cap in the lathe. We then tuned off some of the original knurling and achieved a consistent look that matched the trumpet.

 

This week was our first experiences with lacquering. Most of the parts that I have been working with need to be re-lacquered before sending the horn back. To practice, we used the first slide assemblies that we build weeks earlier. While it may not look like much, it’s lacquered.

Due to the red rot present in my mouthpipe, it needed to be replaced. For this we used an Allied A116 universal mouthpipe that we trimmed to size. After all trimming, fitting and aligning, the original outer tube and mouthpiece receiver were soldered onto the new pipe. After buffing, this pipe will be ready to install on the trumpet.

Finally, in the realm of custom tool making, this week John and I made a Morse N°1 flaring tool. To make a Morse N°1 taper, we used a reamer with the same taper and set the cross slide on the lathe to match using a micrometer. We then cut that taper into each end of a 0.750” piece of cold roll steel, one with a 0.330” end, the other with a 0.400’ end. Finally, we sanded reliefs into the sides to make sure they don’t get stuck.