Red Wing Instrument Repair Blog

[fluteguy18]

Yes, very true. The exterior of the billets look fine, but you never know what's inside until you cut into them.

[flutego12]

Dear fluteguy18
I'm so so sorry to read about your accident! I hope you have healed COMPLETELY and are up and about romancing the woodwinds again.
Everything heal, be made whole and supernaturally redeemed in Jesus' precious Name

After all the horror stories about the lathe, I'm staying far far away.

BTW, love the wood blocks. Cocobollo is beautiful - are they expensive?. When are you putting them headjoints up for sale - what's your logo and marketing plan

[fluteguy18]

(removed)

[fluteguy18]

OH! On a side note! Does anyone here remember the user Flutepicc06? Chris and I enjoyed talking a good bit about repair and various other things in private messages. I have lost touch with him but found out the other day that he went through the program here in Red Wing about 2 years ago. While he was here, he made some flute headjoints and the instructors have been very interested in helping on my project since its so similar. John in particular enjoyed Chris' projects and has had several good ideas on mine.

[fluteguy18]

I just posted the last of my Brass repair posts for the semester (restoring crumpled bells). I also posted the first two Woodwind Repair posts. They cover screw boards ( I made mine rather... special), and re-corking keys. Fun stuff! I love woodwinds!

Hopefully over this weekend I'll be able to get several posts up. We're actually finishing clarinets and starting flutes in a couple of days. I put my clarinet on the magnehelic (leak detector which basically blows air and gives you a pressure reading). It goes from 0-10, with the objective to get as low as you can (under 1.0). First time out, my top joint read as a 0.5, and my bottom joint as a 4.5. The bottom joint got down to a 2.0 after a couple of adjustments, but it won't get much better. This clarinet overhaul required 12 toneholes to be leveled, and a few in the bottom joint were particularly bad. Even though they seal better now, the surface of the tonehole rim is rather wide and is affecting the seal against pressure (even after re-beveling the outer facing and chamfering the inner edge).

[flutego12]

Looking good, bro.
The blogs look great & thanks for sharing the journey, particular the woodwinds (flute and clarinet)
For clarinets, I found this fantastic resource by Haynes publications - it takes one from pre-school through to college - cognitively.
I wish they had one for the Flute.

[trumpettech]

I went to Red Wing. I learned a lot there, even more since then.

[fluteguy18]

Cool. My blog is miserably behind.

[Zevang]

Completely understandable. As you go deeper into the subjects, less free time for the updates...

[fluteguy18]

That and working two jobs, and various side projects... Building a magnehelic right now in addition to restoring a set of wooden recorders (two altos, a tenor and a bass), and building a custom tool post, and researching various things. I'm busy!

Oh, and they're taking a different approach to teaching this semester. It's a lot of... 'What do YOU think?' and 'These are my thoughts...' and 'Let's see what you come up with and go from there.' So while it feels like I'm learning absolutely nothing I am in fact learning a lot. Definitely making some mistakes, but I'm also learning from them. The lesson this week was: when taking out small sharp pings on the inside of a trumpet main tuning slide, a dent ball can be used as a mandrel. Feel free to use almost any tool you want in combination with the dent balls, but avoid burnishing pliers. They easily make the problem worse. It went from almost perfect to having a perfectly round bulge because the pliers weren't perfectly centered. I got it out, and fixed it, but it was certainly frustrating. Live and learn.

[mirwa]

I think that is one of the best ways of teaching, dont get me wrong, they have a syllabus, which ensures you learn what others have also learnt, but making you think of different ways to carry out a repair, starts to prepare you for the real world.

Very few times does an instrument come in for just a tweak or tune, its usually mangled, bent or broken, so thinking outside the square or in the square is a good start

Keep up the enthusiasm

Steve

[fluteguy18]

I sort of like the new approach but in other ways I dislike it. It's just different and it's pushing us. Though I'll be honest and say that today when push came to shove I pushed them harder than they pushed me. We were making replacement valve stems on the lathes and I found a flaw in their production process that would yield an unpredictable outcome on a specific aspect of it. I had to force my perspective on the issue before they realized what I had discovered. I don't like being particularly bossy, but it was a slight moment of victory for me.

[fluteguy18]

Several new posts have gone up.

[flutego12]

woo Hooo! Thanks fluteguy18
Being too busy to sit read and digest does not mean it is not appreciated.
Really appreciate your blog, it's a valued resource fluteguy18. Want to sit down and digest soon.

Happy restoring- I love recorders, before I got into flutes I was into the whole family of them - just in Yam'haw resin. I just got me a tin (with very little nickel hopefully) flute. Very excited, curious about it's accoustic & design properties and hope I won't be disappointed. We shall see how it goes projection wise and key mechanism state, a potential project.

Chat properly soon.

[fluteguy18]

It's okay. I'm also using as a job seeking resource and it's been very helpful in that pursuit. (Any questions about that need to be sent as a PM). I was going to upload several more posts today but in the process of checking the alignment of some trombone slides I had straightened my hand slipped and the slides bit me. Left a huge gouge in my left ring finger.

Very little typing will be done tonight.