week 15

 Oh no! That tonehole has a dent in it, so it's not round. Luckily Lucas has fun pliers to fix that, one half was flat and the other one was round, so it was easy to make the tonehole round again.

Ta Da! Doesn't that look round? It looks like nothing happened to it, which was my goal.

Okay, look at the base of that post, can you see the line that kind of looks like solder around the bottom part of it? The post was way off and needed to be moved. Lucas wanted to use it as a demo for the class so I let him.

This is the post on the opposite side of the one that used to be in the wrong spot, I put the hinge rod in  (I made sure the hinge rod was straight before I used to to look at the placement) and looked at how off it was. I needed to move the weird post just a bit more to make the keywork nice and smooth.

Making a new hinge rod! One of my hinge rods was very stubborn when I tried to bend it straight and got all sorts of weird things going on, so I got to make a new one. First I have to file down the end that gets the threads, to the outer size of the threads, then I cut the threads in with a die.

Next I stick the hinge rod I made into it's place, and cut it to size.

 That looks about right. I could make it flush with the post, but looking at other hinge rods on this horn made me decide to have it just a tad shorter.

Now, the most important part, cutting in the screwdriver slot. 

And at last, putting the new one in. Now, of course it needs the keys on, but I think this looks beautiful too.

While I'm on the subjects of hinge rods, this is a clarinet that I got from ebay, and the hinge rod is stuck in the key/posts. 

 Lucas helped me get it out. He put tape on the clarinet to protect it from scratches and told me grind down the rod, and then cut a new slot in it (because the old slot was all messed up). I eventually got it out that way and made a new hinge rod.

Doesn't that rod look perfect? It looks like it has always belonged there.