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.

Being surrounded by so many inspiring and enthusiastic techs has its benefits. That is why I decided to create a new page to share some of the wonderful instruments I am coming in contact with while in Red Wing. Just look under the "Other Instruments" page to see several fascinating examples of instruments that are a little less common.

Our project clarinets were due last Friday and I am really excited with how it turned out. You can see the final results on the updated Project Clarinet page.

As it turns out, oranges are good for clarinets too. Here are a few bells being moisturized by the orange peels in the bag. A few days of this and they should be back to new.

Everything is busy as usual. I just finished reading The Preservation and Use of Historical Musical Instruments by Robert Barclay, and I took the two days off from class that we had and made a tool holder for my work bench. I am still getting everything set exactly where I want it but the tool holder has all ready made me more organized and efficient while working.

Practice, practice, practice.

This is my work bench at the house and
my new screw board that I made
the first day of woodwind lab.

Today we moved to the woodwind side and I will begin to work on clarinets for the next eight weeks. The move is exciting but I think I am going to miss the brass side. Here is a view of my new bench.

Here it is. I finished my client trumpet (for now). Go to the Project Trumpet page to see all of the details.

Today, Greg brought in a neat horn made by M. Jiracek & Sons. Look at the valve arrangement, they are definitely different. The link to this company's website is www.jiracek.eu/en.html. This is a Czech company that offers several interesting instruments, as well as some historical brass instruments. I can not speak to the playability of such a valve arrangement on the horn but it was definitely a joy to see.

Just another day in the shop. This is Greg and John, two of the instructors for the course.

This bell fold is far from being done but I want to go ahead and post some pictures of the progress that has all ready taken place.



The picture above shows the fold, which stretches all the way around the bell, making this more of a restoration than just a quick fix. There was no reference with which to rely upon in order to know when the bell had returned to the original shape.

After several trips between the bell mandrel and the roller it is possible to see the bell starting to lie flat. I still need to spend a good deal of time with the burnisher in order to restore the surface to being as smooth as possible and will update as soon as that happens.

Today I built a first valve slide assembly.



First the parts.




Add the solder.




Then buff.

These parts were kindly donated to the school by the Yamaha Corporation, and this project would not have been possible without their help. The crooks for all student line Yamaha trumpets are the same size so I was able to use a Yamaha trumpet that the school owns for alignment and to hold the pieces while they were assembled.