This week in the woodwind lab, we continued with play condition repairs on flute with a large focus on padding. Getting back into partial shimming is not the easiest thing in the world. So on this particular flute, I checked each pad for issues and reshimmed a few to pretty much finish it up.
One issue that I did attack was some serious lateral play in the Bb thumb assembly. With the amount that I had, usually on a PC we would swedge the rod. Unfortunately, this was having little effect and the play was messing with my padding. So I replaced the existing hinge rod with an oversized one. This involved making a hinge rod from scratch, refitting the keys, lapping the hinge tube to the new rod, and realigning the post that happened to be out of whack. It turned into more work than it was worth, but a good experience none the less.
We started getting into saxophone this week, mostly looking at how they are put together and what controls things like venting and regulation. Sax is a cool instrument and the mechanics fascinate me. We spend a good portion of the week tearing them down and putting them back together. Unlike flute or clarinet, there is no standard for how a sax is mechanically constructed, as long as the fingering works, so it was quite the puzzle.
Finally this week, we looked at honing lathe bits. We do a lot of small machining in the shop for both brass an woodwind parts. Grinding and honing our own bits is a good skill to have, especially when you look at running your own shop. Next week, we will look at grinding different shapes and working bits from scratch.
One issue that I did attack was some serious lateral play in the Bb thumb assembly. With the amount that I had, usually on a PC we would swedge the rod. Unfortunately, this was having little effect and the play was messing with my padding. So I replaced the existing hinge rod with an oversized one. This involved making a hinge rod from scratch, refitting the keys, lapping the hinge tube to the new rod, and realigning the post that happened to be out of whack. It turned into more work than it was worth, but a good experience none the less.
We started getting into saxophone this week, mostly looking at how they are put together and what controls things like venting and regulation. Sax is a cool instrument and the mechanics fascinate me. We spend a good portion of the week tearing them down and putting them back together. Unlike flute or clarinet, there is no standard for how a sax is mechanically constructed, as long as the fingering works, so it was quite the puzzle.
Finally this week, we looked at honing lathe bits. We do a lot of small machining in the shop for both brass an woodwind parts. Grinding and honing our own bits is a good skill to have, especially when you look at running your own shop. Next week, we will look at grinding different shapes and working bits from scratch.
No comments:
Post a Comment