End of Semester

I just finished the first semester in Red Wing. It's too cold so I am happy to be home in FL :) I had a lot of fun, made a lot of friends, and learned a lot. I look forward to learning more. I miss the friends I have made but I don't miss this...

Hooray for a successful semester in Red Wing!!

Tuba Project

A Tuba came in to our shop from our finacial aid advisor, Anne in the school. Her son is just learning ho to play and needed a tuba at home to practice. Anne got the tuba from her nefew that used to play it. The tuba was in very bad shape and had broken valve stems. The repair techs that last worked on this did some faulty repairs such as soldering the valve stems into the piston. One of the was silver soldered! Also, the pistons were sanded and looked really bad. The tuba itself has many dents and desperately needed a chem flush. We didn't do any dent work on it because we just needed it to play. Here's what we did...

We put it in the Ultra Sonic Cleaner

The Sound vibrations and mild acid help free the dirt and scale inside the instrument...

We also cleaned all the slides and parts including the pistons...

We decided to make new vlave stemssince the other ones were in very bad shape. They were bent, dirty, and corroded. Plus, the threads were shot... We unsoldered them too. Only one of the four was in good shape so we used that one as a guideline to make the others.

We soldered brass plugs into the pistons so we could make new threads. I drilled holes in the plugs and then used a tap to make the threads...

Lee drilled holes and tapped the new valve stems. He also made the outer threads. He buffed them and they looked great!

We had Carl play test it after we did the porting. We were proud of our new valve stems. The tube is currently in the hads of a happy fifth grader :)

Buckle

We all had to restore a trombone bell that has had a nasty buckle...

I took out the dents, rounded the throat, and made the rim level. Now it looks like this:

Soft Soldering

Here is my first time soldering. I soldered a flange to a trumpet bell. I did three for practice and then we had to do a test. I'll have a post on the final one later....

The first couple times I made a mess and solder was everywhere!

But is got better the more I did it
Overall I think it went well but I need more practice....

Brass Class

Last week we switched classes so now I will be working on brass instruments. Check out this trumpet. I took it apart, claned it and put it back together.

I've also made some new tools. Check them out in my tools page :)

IT PLAYS

IT PLAYS!!!!!

These keys were really bent but I fixed them

It didn't have a thumb rest before... but now it does

Remember how dirty the keys were?

This mouthpiece was filthy but now its ok... I still would get a new one though...

For a first project, I think I did pretty well. I know it is not perfect and not all the pads would seal but it was a good learning experience. There were a lot of issues with this clarinet and I did my best to fix them. It went from not being able to play at all to playing condition!

Clarinet Padding

Clarinet Padding
Today was clarinet padding day. I glued in all the pads but I only seated the upper joint. There were some leaks in two keys when I was done so I got one fixed but and still working on the other. I took my clarinet home for the weekend to work on corking. I think I am getting a lot better at padding the clarinet :) Here are some pictures from today...






Cleaned the flat springs... They were really nasty. You can really see a difference


Have to make sure the pads are sealing real well....




Checking the pads...

Post Corrosion

Post Corrosion
A few days ago, we recieved old, broken down, and down right nasty clarinets. Mine smelled horrible! It even had some little roaches in the case. Some of the pictures in the slideshow above show how gross this poor clarinet is... well was. I have cleaned it, chem flushed it, and buffed it. It's maybe halfway there... I have picked out the pads already for it too. Some of my classmates have already installed the pads but my clarinet had some major issues that needed to be delt with... mainly key fitting....




Today was an interesting day in class. I had a corroded clarinet post that was so bad, the scew was stuck inside. I finally got the screw out using a vise to hold the post in place and a screw driver! That was after Lukas took a jeweler's saw to it. After it was out, I chem flushed it to get rid of the remaining corrosion and make it all shiney! I also had to make sure there was no more rust inside the post and fit a new screw to it. I put it on the clarinet and it was awesome! Works like new now.






Here's what the post looked like before:




The key could barely move!

























And here it is after:
Now it works great!
I buffed the keys today too and the clarinet is now ready for padding! :)

Hello, welcome to my blog for Band Instrument Repair. I have been studying here in Red Wing, MN for a few weeks now. I have been learning how to fix clarinets and flutes so far. I really enjoy it but it is a lot of hard tiring work. Check out my photos!