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.