Second Semester: Week 7

This week consisted of more trombone slide work. I worked on practice slide tube dents on a single trombone outer slide tube. After two rounds of practice dents I moved on to a practice hand slide. My instructor put in dents and changed the span and skew of the outer and inner tubes. I had to bring the handslide up to playing condition. I started by cleaning and straightening both the inner and outer tubes. Next, I worked on the span and skew of the inner slide tubes. In order to check the span I looked at the movement of the inner slides after I pulled them out of the outer tubes. Once the skew and span was fixed I worked on the outer tube dents. I started by roughing them out and then finishing them with the steel hammer. As I was working I realized the lower inner tube was out of round and was making it difficult to determine what the slide was suppose to feel like. I brought it back to the best playing condition without burnishing or changing out the tube.

My practice trombone slide. Here there is nothing wrong with it yet, but once my instructor got a hold of it I was in for a treat!

Finally after all that practicing I got to work on my project trombone. I worked on the crook/guard dent. I tried to preserve the guard by pulling it up but the bumper starting ripping the guard so I ended up taking it off.

The crook/guard that is pushed in and needs to be fixed

Second Semester: Week 6

This week we continued to work on trombones and focused on trombone handslides. I learned that when working on outer handslide dents it is important to have multiple hammers on hand. To rough out the dent start with the closest fitting slide mandrel inside the outer tube and hit the dent with a raw hide mallet. Then move to a large delrin hammer. Once the dent is roughed out you can move to a nose picker. This helps bring the dents up to surface and can be finished with a steel hammer on a slide mandrel.

I also worked on trombone bell dent work. The main work on this bell was a bell fold.

We also got to hear from band instrument repair technicians that spoke at the NAPBIRT regional conference this past weekend. Scott Mandeville discussed the culture of a workshop and the attitude of technicians. He also talked about the synthetic Omni Pads. Omni pads are a great alternative to bladder pads and can withstand changing climates. Mike Corrigan is a Red Wing graduate that talked to us about trombone handslide repair. It was great to hear how he works on slides and how he makes his own trombones and trumpets. It was very informative day.

Second Semester: Week 5

This week was a work week for our project french horns but we also learned how to sight trombone slides. Sighting trombone slides can be tricky but once a slide is aligned the action of the slide can be greatly improved. To sight a slide stand parallel to a fluorescent light source. hold the slide up towards the light so that there are two beams of light that follow along the slide. The lines are suppose to be parallel. Where the light bends is where the slide needs to be scooped back into alignment.

The outer lower slide is curving to the left. This is from the handslide perspective

Same slide from the crook perspective. The lower slide is definitely curving in towards the upper brace

Second Semester: Week 4

Dents, dents and more dents! This week I worked on all of the dents in my french horn. I started with the bell and throat dents. I used the knowledge I have gained so far and applied that where I could. I also was able to use new tools specific to the french horn. The french horn can be awkward at times because there is so much tubing.

The bell stem area is heavily dented. The hard part about taking out dents here was that the area had been heavily worked previously.

A curved french horn mandrel that fits inside the bell and matches the arch. I put a ball attachment on the end to rebound the deep dents. There are different sized balls and cones that fit on the mandrels

Soldering a 'T' handle to a dent to pull it up

I put the 'T' handle in the vice and pulled up the dent

Another tool that can be soldered to a dent is a dent puller. This one was made by a previous student. The steel stock is used as the force that pulls the dent out

These are larger sized dent balls that come in an A and B set. I worked my way up the throat of the french horn by alternating dent balls

I placed the balls on a wire so that I could force the balls into the horn and then retrieve them

All of these new techniques are vital to taking out dents, especially when the horn has a lot of tubing