We started oboe today and as always there are plenty of interesting things floating around the school. The first picture shows a single reed mouthpiece for the oboe.





The next two photographs show a metal Graslites Oboe by Kohlert and Sons. While it is not the type of instrument that I will typically encounter, it does serve a purpose in illustrating just how small the bore is in an oboe. Because the bore is so small and the wooden bodies so thick, oboes are prone to cracking. The moisture content of the wood on the inside of the instrument is more likely to be higher than the wood on the outside of the instrument.

I found myself in Los Angeles over spring break. Aside from visiting as many music stores as possible, I took a short trip down to Anaheim for a tour of the Kanstul factory. I was able to meet Zig Kanstul and received a wonderful tour by Charles in sales and marketing. Other highlights include a trip to The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens as well as a stop by Robb Stewart's Brass Instrument Shop.

The school is hosting a regional clinic for NAPBIRT tomorrow and some of the clinicians, as well as board members for the school, were nice enough to come a day early and speak to the class. The day started with a presentation from Scott Mandeville from Tim's Music in Sacramento, CA. Then continued with a presentation from Mike Corrigan and Andy Vavricek from BAC Horn Doctors in Kansas. They are manufacturing instruments in the United States and also offer a Sackbut. The day was finished with Cristobal Quintana from Miyazawa Flutes and Mark Sorlie, the Warranty Manager from Yamaha Corporation of America. Mark also brought everyone a new apron with our names embroidered onto them. Thank you, to the people at Yamaha for such a nice gift.

This week we started learning about Trombones. We began with cleaning and aligning handslides. Stay posted for a project instrument page soon.

We have been working with French Horns in class and today I was able to spend some time with several different examples. They include Single Horns in both Bb and F, Compensating Horn, Double Horn: both Geyer and Kruspe wraps, a Schmidt Horn, a Natural Horn, and an Italian horn with five valves.

Today I was able to observe a demonstration on pipe bending. While fixing an older model cornet it was decided that replacing the mouthpipe would be necessary but nothing that was available would have been an exact match. The replacement mouthpipe would have to be bent manually to ensure the best possible fit. The mouthipe was placed into the vice and bent around a wood jig that was cut to desired shape. The photograph shows the new mouthpipe after the bending process.










Here you can see the new mouthpipe on the instrument. It will be sent away for silver plating in order to match the rest of the instrument.


Before the plating the pipe must be trimmed to the final shape and prepared for plating. The picture on the right shows the removal of the pitch that it inside the pipe. This is a black tar substance, the same that has been around for hundreds of years, that helps the pipe to stay round while bending. The pitch fills the entire pipe creating support so that the pipe will not crimp when bent.

Today marks the end of a successful first week back. I have switched to the brass side of the shop to concentrate on large brass including horn and trombone, but first a little review.








Here you can see my cornet bell ready to be fixed. I soldered the brace and buffed the bell in order to start working on the bell fold and removing the flare dents. Next will be the stem dents and the less visible bow dents. A practice patch to finish and I will have completed my review and be ready to start on horns.

I want to share the video that Jason Davis created for his show On the Road. He and the crew spent a day in Red Wing filming and talking to the students. The resulting footage turned out great and should be a great promotional item for the school. Follow this link to see the finished product. http://kstp.com/article/stories/S2444428.shtml?cat=26

I finished my customer flute just before Christmas. Click on the new tab titled Project Flute in order to see an overview of the entire project.