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.