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.