week 15

This is my pad iron, and the little plastic things I use for leveling pad cups.

Those are bigger feelers. The red one being the thinnest one.

A pad getting ready to be ironed.

A pad after being ironed. Look at that smooth skin!

Whoever was handling that pad last time didn't tighten the screw up, and when I did, it wrinkled up. This would be ironed again and then a seat put in the pad, but it's just a methods flute, so I'll let it be.

See that hole? Between the pad and the tone hole? The pad is touching on the sides, but not where that hole is, that means I have to either level the pad cup by flexing it down or putting a shim under the pad.

Doesn't that look nice? My pad is sealing very well. There's just the smallest gap where I can feel that the touch is lighter but we're not going that deep.

Look at that smug face. Now it's not sealing at the top (the foot joint is upside down in this picture), and I used a marker to remember where that leak is.

This is a mailbox with a lightbulb in it. Yes, an easy-bake oven. Lucas made this one using a cheap mail-box and a lightbulb, but he also put a timer on the light bulb.

Inside the mailbox-oven we put our pads that have to be seated. We wet the pad just a little, clip it with a pad-clip and put it in the oven for 15 minutes. Then it has to sit for an hour with the clip still on, and then another hour with the clip off before I can check how the pad seals. If I wouldn't wait, I'd get false results, and I'd think it would seal great, but few hours later it would all be leaking and I wouldn't have a clue why!

My clipped foot joint.

We had to squeeze our pad-clips because they were so tight, if they close too tightly it will give us false results and ruin the seat. Jeff had those nice pliers (he said they were for pli-ing) that worked great to fix the clips.

What is this? It's an old clarinet that a guy brought in. This clarinet is from Norway and is from the ca. 1850s
The whole class rushed to the front to look at this clarinet.

The tenon is broken, how sad!

It has interesting keys, and it doesn't have posts, but pins that have been inserted into the wood.

This one got to make a smug face too, but I got my project flute before I could look at it better and shim it, so I didn't do anything but mark it.

Can you spot the broken post in this picture? It's kind of between the two padcup arms.

A broken post, how fun. We're going into body work next week and I can't wait to fix it!

Look at the edge of that key, the thing that looks like marker? Yes, that's plating that someone BUFFED OFF. You're not supposed to buff plating, and that's why. The broken post probably broke when someone was buffing this flute.

The broken post again. Look closely, the black marks on the flute body is buffing compound.

Can you spot the China? Yes, this flute is made in China, the barrel says USA, but the flute body says China. It's because the parts are made in China, and then the flute is assembled in Elkhart, USA.

China again.

The flute sitting on my bench, waiting to be disassembled.

Gemenhardt. The newer Gemeinhardt are made in China, but the older ones are made in USA. They started doing this about 10 years ago.

The flute case of my project flute. I'm torn between "Why did they try to fix that with tape?" and "Where can I get purple tape like that?"

The flute and the head-cork that was inside. It's dirty and we're going to change it. It might seal okay, but I know everyone has to change the head-cork to get some practice.

Buffing compound. In the joint. Now, the buffing compound has caused a lot of scratches inside the joint, and in time it would become loose and cause loads of trouble. Let's clean that up.

What a dirty flute!
It will go through chemical cleaning and it will look nice again soon!

My project flute, completely disassembled. "Draw me like one of your french girls"

Some of my pad washers had Chinese on them. Lucas told me that the washer material didn't really matter. He has seen newspaper, magazine paper and even pages from the Bible used!

Yuck! My trill keys and my upper stack c key were full of gross glue.We use clear hot glue (similar to what you see in glue guns) because it doesn't chip, it's easy to clean, and it works well.

Now, to completely disassemble the flute, the keys can be taken apart. This can be done with the cool device in the picture. It removes and inserts pins.

Those are the tools that you use to get the pin out, or insert it. The first one to the left is concave, it has a hole in the point. If the pin is sticking out this is the best choice. The next one is pointy, but it's not sharp. It's good for when the pin is sticking out just a little bit. The third, with the really pointy end is good when the pin is not sticking out at all. The one on the far left is good when the pin is inside the hinge tube and the pointy one doesn't have steep enough taper to reach it.

 Let's take a pin out. In this picutre I'm using the concave. I was just using it to take the picture after I got it far enough to use the flat point.

week 13+14

 This is my tonehole leveler. I use it to roll it on the cork in the picture, so the cork will get nice and round. In the picture I have already rolled it so it's curved.

After gluing the tenon cork on, it's dry and not slippery (we want to make it slippery so it will slide easily into the clarinet and seal properly). This is a paraffin wax that we then heat with our torches. I tested the heating on a bad cork and that cork is really easy to scorch!

This is what it looks like after heating. Nice and smooth.

 This is a cork that I messed up while cutting, and didn't see it until I only had 15 minutes left to finish off my clarinet and had already glued it on. Whoops. This one should be replaced because cork grease will find it's way in that crack and under the cork, damaging the glue so the cork will spin on the tenon; or break loose.

This is my bench partner (we sit next to each other) Whitney. She's cleaning all fingerprints off her clarinet using gloves, so she doesn't put new fingerprints on.

This is my clarinet, all done and ready to go! I had just enough time to quickly wipe the visible fingerprints.

Farewell clarinet!

My flute screw board. It's just like the clarinet screw board but this one says flute. Kidding, it has different holes as the clarinet and flute keys are very different. The flute is pretty easy to take apart, compared to the clarinet, well, as long as we're not counting knockpins.

My flute all taken apart, the screw board for the flute looks really simple. And the sheet for flute nomenclature, soon there will be a test on that!

My flute naked. this is my method flute, I'm not quite ready to take apart my own!

Again, my screw board.

Looks like someone decided to change one pad. Can you guess which one?

Oh wow, trying to fix the regulation. This is the f to f# on the lower stack of the flute. Those two should be touching at the exact same time, but the pads are a bit messed up and I just put way thicker foot corks in so they won't touch. Regulation is two or more keys closing together with one touch.

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.