week 12

So I took my customer clarinet apart, and there the keys are sitting, waiting to be de-padded, de-corked and put through chemical cleaning.

The row of cork pieces in this picture are used to measure the distance from the pad cup to the rim of the pad, how far the pad itself sticks out of the pad cup. They can also be used to measure cork thickness.
They are made out of synthetic cork that doesn't compress, so the measurement won't change. Except my 3.0 one that Lucas says we will change later.

I took the corks and the pads off, and now my keys are sitting in a pile, waiting for me to get them through chemical cleaning. This may look like chaos, but I assure you, it's organized chaos.

This used to have a cork, a tenon cork, but I took it off, so I can clean the body. The body goes through some mild de-greaser, while the keys go through the same process as brass does; de-greaser for 15 minutes, and then more aggressive stuff, milkstone remover for 2 minutes.

When swedging the keys to make them fit, some keys can't be swedged. This can be because the key has a weird shape and therefore no way to fit the pliers or the collet on. Some keys just simply don't want to!
And that's where those baby washers come in. We can put them on the end of the hinge rod to take up space. And then the hinge rod can't move around!

Ow. That is what my hand looked like after swedging a key with my fancy swedging pliers. A lot of pressure, and the key still didn't want to be swedged. Oh, well, the distance between the hinge tube and the post is less than the thickness of a razorblade (9/1000 of an inch) so it's okay.

Tiny tiny screw. This is a screw from a spring. I know that because I can see it has a head, while I know that the pivot screws in my clarinet don't have a head. Also it doesn't have a pointy end like my pivot screws.

Padding!
This is my upper joint, and the key is the f# ring key. I just put in that pad and it looks nice. We check the seal with our feeler gauges that we made, and after padding our whole joint, we can use the MAG machine to test if it holds air. Must remember to take a picture of that thing next week, it's amazing.

Corking. This is the inline Bb/Eb key, and I just put that cork on there. The cork was cut and shaped with a razor blade. It's a good thing I didn't cut myself while cutting that cork, or the cork could have turned red. Taking it off and putting a new one on takes time, and we want to avoid that.

Making the cork fit. This is the f# ring key foot connecting to the foot of the thumb ring. Anyway, It's two pieces of nickel silver contacting, and we want to put on a cork to both silence the key action, and make the distance between the pad and the tone hole (how far up the pad lifts to let air out) right. Now. the underside of sandpaper isn't really smooth so we put a special blue tape under. The sandpaper is pretty fine, 600 grit.

week 11

 The tone hole levelers that we made a long time ago, so shiny and pretty. But Lucas wants them absolutely flat, so we had to sandpaper them in a figure 8 motion on our superflat anvil.

My methods clarinet and some of the tools I was using to fix the keys. Yes that is a clothes pin taken apart. We put it under a key before hitting it with a hammer to protect it.

That key was really hard to get right. First it tipped backwards and I fixed that by putting half a clothes pin under the arm of the key, and hitting the tip with a canvas hammer. Then, because I didn't hit it with the right angle it started to tip to the left, and I fixed that by grabbing my protected knipex pliers (parallel jaw pliers) and using it gently on the arm to bend it to the right position.

Jeff here (guy to the far left) needed a inner tube for a trumpet he's working on. The tube was made with a seam because that's what they did before 1930ish and the owner wanted the trumpet restored originally. So, they made a brass piece into a tube, soldered the middle, and then squeezed said tube through this machine to make it the right thickness and right bore size.

That happens in our school. Greg (teacher to the far right) was rolling the huge instrument in the picture (sousaphone?) to class and Billy (the huge marine guy playing the instrument) decided that he needed to play it in the middle of the hallway. After all, there is sheet music on the walls!

Swedging. It's just squeezing the key so it fits the hinge rod inside better. What it does too is get rid of end play that exists between the posts, as in, you can move the whole thing around and it makes the pads not fit very well over the tone holes. I'm fixing the f# ring key in this picture. The swedging has to be perfect, the hinge rod has to be inside so we don't accidentally crush it, and the pressure has to be the same around the key.

More swedging. I was showing that you have to swedge all around the tube evenly.

Looking for play in the key. I wedge it sideways with my fingers to see if it wiggles. If so, it needs to be swedged.

week 10

 Lucas handed three keys to each of us and showed us how to change the cork.

We had to make those nice and shiny. Pad slicks, meant to move and float pads to the right leveling.

 This is a feeler gauge, it has a washer material at the end. We slip those between the tone hole and the pad to see if it seals properly.

Really just a stick with a feeler material glued on, but highly useful.

The torch at my bench. Must remember to turn off the gas at the end of the day!

Padding. This is the new pad I put in. I took out the old pad, cleaned the pad cup, put a glob of hot stick glue on the pad, and put the pad in the pad cup. I had to clean up the sides of the pad since I put just a little bit too much glue. Finally after some heating and pushing the pad sealed perfectly.

We had another lathe project, a brass tube to put into the inner tubes of a trumpet to help take out dents. This is Alana using the mini lathe.

Must be absolutely perfect.

Drilling into the brass tube. The drill makes squeaky sounds when it gets full.

And now making the threads inside of the tube so a screw can be screwed in.

This is how my slide tube mandrel turned out. Really happy with the results, even if I scratched it a bit when trying to see if it would fit into Brandon's trumpet. 

All smooth and nice.

Looking pretty good. The screw is just acting as a handle, nothing needs to be put on there like with the dentball holder.