week 8 and 9

 This is my project trumpet, this brace is broken, and the bad part is, it doesn't have flanges, so it's going to be hard to repair it without having it fall off.

 It fell off, it didn't fit really well anyway, I made small round patches for both sides of that brace, to make it stay in place while I soldered it.

There was also a dent under that broken brace. Good thing that Greg let me try out that weird tool that I can put dentballs on.  Now, it's very crucial to put grease on the ball. Even if it has tape on it. Or it will get stuck and not even the huge marine in my class can pull it out. It came out when Greg put some valve oil in there to ruin the tape and make it slippery. Yay!

I got an extra trumpet to take out knuckle dents, since neither my project trumpet nor my mouth pipe project had knuckle dents in. Those were rubbed out with my fancy dent rod.

Remember the video with Greg smashing my trombone bell? Well, this is what my trombone bell looked like after I took out the buckle. I kind of like the wavy scratches but I guess those will get better if you buff it and polish it.

The inside of my trombone bell after I took out the dents. I had some difficulty finding them because they are so small, but Greg used a marker to show me where those dents were hiding.

That would be my mouth pipe project, buffed and nice. I lacquered it too. 

My broken brace after I soldered it on, and buffed away the mess.

My project trumpet again. My mouth pipe was crooked, and I had to take care of that by putting the trumpet on a bench peg, and pushing. A bit scary.

The waterkey on my project trumpet. The waterkey spring was in pretty bad shape, and besides, it was wrapped around the bridge, which will make the spring go bad and break more easily.

Putting the waterkey cork in it's rightful place!

 I play tested the project trumpet, and oh my, did it sound good. The bore of the trumpet is smaller and the trumpet itself is lighter, so it was easier to play than my methods trumpet!

That's me with my nosepicker. Reparo!

Brass class for this semester is almost over so we must give back our trumpet bells and trombone bells. Goodbye!

My project trumpet before I put it in, all fixed up and nice. It didn't even play when I got it, because someone put the valves in the wrong casings!

My crook, no dents, but it still feels lumpy. Sometimes you just can't get it better.

That's my workbench at the woodwinds lab! Can't wait to get started on clarinets and flutes!

week 7

So this is a video of Greg smashing my trombone bell (thanks Greg for letting me film that one)

This is my bell after smashing. Oh god, will it ever be pretty again?

This is the waterkey of my project trumpet. More like, this is where it's supposed to be because I took it off so I could clean it. Anyways, look at the red stuff around the ring thing. That's red buffing compound that someone didn't think was worth cleaning up. My waterkey itself was full of that and it looked like red wax.

The underside of the button from my project trumpet. Again, red buffing compound.

The top of my button (project trumpet), pearl. Pretty pretty pretty.

Oh no! My pretty crook that I put together. I wonder who decided to smash it with a hammer...
Let's take those out!

One side of a tool I made called Nosepicker. It takes out mouthpiece dents really nicely.

The other side of my Nosepicker.

My Nosepicker!

This is my mouthpiece project. I had to make the flange fit the casing, it was not painless.

Ow, that's a fold in a trumpet bell. Greg was really happy when he saw how easy my bell would fold..

Nice solder joints, no wiping needed, the gray stuff will go away when buffed.

More nice solder joints, except for the fact that the upper one got quite messy. Those are the S braces on my mouthpiece trumpet.

The usual mess on my work bench.

week 6

 my messy work bench. That trumpet is my mouthpipe project.

 The old mouthpipe next to the new one. I had to make the bigger end even bigger so it would fit the outer tube. I did so with dent balls, and you can clearly see the ridges on the tube on this picture. What a complete failure. Anyways, Greg was nice and got me a different one (not the universal one).

 This is the new new mouthpipe. It's more red and pretty. The time I spent on getting that thing straight and nice was, I'm gonna say, worth it.

 OH! WHAT IS THIS?? This was waiting on my bench Thursday morning. Wow, I was so excited. This is my project trumpet. A trumpet from an actual customer that I have to fix up. Let's see how it looks inside the case.

 pretty, pretty, pretty. It's pretty loose in it's case, which makes me a bit concerned.

 let's check the brand. It says Victory. Never heard of it. None the less the bell has very pretty engravings, flowers and leafs.

 oh no! Dents. Poor thing. Those are stem dents. They don't look bad compared to what some of my classmates have to deal with though.

 Pretty buttons! The buttons probably have pearl buttons, instead of plastic which is most common. Buttons don't go through the chem cleaning so that's fine.

 What is this? An extra part that can come off? I was really confused, but apparently this is a trumpet that can change the tuning from Bb to A.

 Ugh, grime and white/green scale. This will go away in the chemical cleaning.

 Some bad scale my project trumpet had.

 The part that was supposed to come off was a bit stuck, so I put corrosion cracker on it, and in few hours it came off. Just gentle pulling, because I don't want to cause damage when trying to fix something.

 Looks like I was trying to take a picture of the casings. But there is some scale. Note, all the pistons were in the wrong casings.

 Oh, I discovered more dents. What am I getting myself into?

Pretty Red Wing in autumn colours. I think there are 2-3 churches just on that street.