Week 12

Key corking was the topic of this week. After the clarinet is padded it is time to put cork on the keys at articulation points and foot corks. When corking there are many different materials that can be used. The most common material is natural cork. Other materials that are used are composition cork, Valentino cork, Gummi cork, felt, leather, and teflon. People are experimenting with different materials everyday because they are looking for new material that will uphold the stresses put on it by the instrument. For instance on the low A-flat/E-Flat key the foot cork is usually in contact with a small surface. The small surface puts all of the pressure in one area which wears that cork out faster than the rest of the touch piece. Using a stronger material on this key is recommended so that the cork does not have to be replaced frequently.

The cork is contact cemented on to the key

Under the touchpiece

Rough trimmed cork

Fine trimming and adding the bevel

Finished key cork on the A-flat/E-flat key

Week 11

Padding! A clarinet pad is made of three parts: cardboard, felt and a skin covering. The skin covering can be made of a bladder, intestine or synthetic material. A pad can be installed with shellac or hot glue. NEVER, NEVER use super glue for gluing a pad. In order to pad you heat up the pad cup. When super glue is heated it produces cyanide gas. Before padding I cleaned the pad cups using a utility rag and denatured alcohol. When the pad cup was clean I heated up my glue and put it in the pad cup. Next I heated the pad cup so that the glue was warm. I then placed the pad in the cup. All of these steps were done with the key off of the instrument. I then installed the key on the clarinet to level the pad to the tone hole. Once the pad is floating on the glue I manipulated it to seal on the tone hole. With padding there are different issues that can arise. The pad may not be level (it is warped), tone hole is not level, not enough glue or too much glue. All of these factors determine how long the padding will take. Padding is a skill that I will get better with more practice.

Heating the glue to put in the pad cup

Heating the pad cup with glue in it so that it is ready for the pad

Week 10

This week I learned about key fitting. When working on keys it is important to take out end play and lateral play in the keys. This extra motion in the keys makes the clarinet feel sloppy to a player and can add extra noise. When fitting a key it is important to know if the key you are working on has a hinge rod with a hallow hinge tube or a solid hinge tube with pivot screws. When working with a hinge tube a rod the key is able to be swedged with a swedging pliers or a swedging collet. Swedging the keys thins the metal which stretches it and makes the key longer. This removes the end play. The lateral play, which is the movement between the hinge rod and tube, can be taken out with the swedging tools because it forms the tube to the rod. This takes up the space between the tube and rod and removes the lateral play. There are two main types of pivot screws: point screws and pilot screws. Standard point pivot screws have a pointed end and a head. These are nice screws to take out end and lateral play. In order to take out play I need to make the screw go in further. This is done by removing material from the post with a pivot screw counter sink.  Headless point pivot screws are the easiest to fix end play because the screw can be placed further in the key tube. Pilot screws are screws that have a cylindrical rod after the threads. There is no fix for lateral play but in order to fix end play washers need to be installed to fill the space.

Swedging collet tool. There are different size collets for
different sized hinge tubes

My clarinet screw board showing the different
hinge rods and pivot screws

Dent Roller

I had a question about what type of dent roller I used on trombone bells to remove bell dents.

Dent roller in vice

Placed in the vice with a V block

The ball bearing ring on the roller

Week 9

This week I moved to the Woodwind Lab.  The first thing we had to do was a few house keeping tasks in order to prepare for working on clarinets. I covered my desk rug with muslim so that it would be easy to find pivot screws and other small parts that may land on my bench. I also made a clarinet screw board. This board is used when taking apart a clarinet. It keeps track of hinge rods and pivot screws so that each screw and hinge rod corresponds to the correct key or lever. After making the screw board I took apart my methods clarinet. I started with the upper joint and then moved to the lower joint. Taking apart the clarinet allowed me to learn the names of the keys and levers. I am very excited to learn more about the clarinet.

Wood block and paper that covers the block

Paper Mod Podged to the block

Wood dowel widdled to add a piece of mylar that is 0.001"

Finished feeler used for padding

Screw block with hinge rods and pivot screws from the upper joint

Disassembled upper joint

Organized keys

Week 8

This week was a work week. It was my time to finish up work on my project trumpet before I turned it in on Friday. I spent the beginning of the week finishing dents and alignments so that I would be ready to install the mouth pipe in the middle of the week. I knew that I would have to spot lacquer the trumpet and mouth pipe before I could turn it in. I wanted to have all of the work done before Friday so that the lacquer would have time to dry overnight. I finished lacquering on Thursday so that Friday I could work on porting and water key installation. I also vacuumed out the case and did a minor case repair. After finishing the invoice on the computer my trumpet was ready to turn in. I enjoyed this project immensely! It was a great learning experience. When I first opened the case weeks ago and the trumpet was in pieces I never imagined that I would be able to make this trumpet play. It was a gratifying experience and I cannot wait to work on more horns.

Throat dents that I worked on in the beginning of the week

Fitting the mouth pipe to casing brace

Fitting 'S' braces

Ready for lacquering

Finished project trumpet!

Week 7

The topic this week was all about replacing a mouth pipe. On my project trumpet the mouth pipe was severely damaged and I replaced it with an Allied Universal mouth pipe. The first step was to remove the mouth pipe assembly from my trumpet. Since mine was not attached to start with this was simple. Then I had to take off all of the braces and wipe the excess solder down to tinning. Next, I took apart the mouth pipe assembly. I took of the receiver first and then the upper outer main tuning slide tube. The most exciting part of this process was that my finger hook did not fall off! Once I had it all apart I needed to prep all of the surfaces that were going to be soldered back together. I wiped, scraped and sanded the inside and outside of tubes. This was to remove solder, I also removed the old lacquer so that it did not burn when I soldered the mouth pipe back together. After they were sanded I buffed and degreased so that the solder would flow on the parts. The next step was fitting the new mouth pipe to the old receiver and outer slide tube. In order to make the parts fit I had to flare the one end with a morse #1 taper tool and then insert brass shims to fill the rest of the gap. After everything was fitted and aligned I soldered the mouth pipe assembly together.

The original mouth pipe assembly

Using an old mouth piece to clamp in the vice to pull the
receiver off the mouth pipe

Heating up the outer slide tube

Solder clip on the finger hook so it won't fall off

Mouth pipe assembly apart

Adding shims to fill in the space

Newly assembled mouth pipe