The Band Tech Chronicles

 All flutes have a huge cork that is shoved in the far end of the headjoint, and pretty much all already have the assembly to go with it but my professor offered this as an extra project for me and I thought it looked like a lot of fun! The first thing I did was take a bunch of measurements from the model assembly that I was to copy and draw a model on paper so I had a visual to go off of. All headcork assemblies have 3 parts. The southside plate, the northside plate, and the screw. The southside plate and the screw are solderd together and the northside plate has threads to fit the screw.  The first component I started with was the northside plate. In the lathe, I turned down the outer diameter to size and made a smaller diameter at the front for a place to grab with pliers. When that was done I drilled a hole in the center for the threads.  I then used a tap to create the threads that will allow the plate to screw onto the screw.           ...

 This project is for a clarinet with a worn down finger hole on the upper joint. Over time and with lots of use these finger holes can wear down and something needs to be done. One thing that a tech can do is make an insert out of brass to create a new spot for the players finger.  This is what a finger hole looks like. It is just a hole that is drilled into the body and there is no key that covers this hole, just the players finger.  The first step is to drill out the old hole so that a larger diameter chunk of brass can fit into it. To prevent too much of the wood tearing out from the drill bit, I covered the hole with blue painters tape. This ended up working really well. On the lathe I chucked the piece of brass larger in diameter that I needed, and I turned it down so that it would fit snugly into the new hole in the clarinet. I then drilled a hole in the center of the brass, the same diameter as the origional hole in the clarinet.  Then I cut off the new finger...

 The tall tone holes on a clarinet are called chimneys. Since chimneys are sticking out of the body, they are likely to get chipped. Especially if it is a wood clarinet. To fix this, a tech has to drill out the old one and fabricate a whole new one.  The first step is to take measurements of every portion of the origional chimney. Once I was confident that I didnt forget any, I used the drill press and got rid of the old chimney by drilling it out.  To fabricate the new chimney from the measurements I took, I used a chunk of delerin plastic and the lathe. I first turned the piece of delerin down to the correct diameter for the base of the chimney. Then truned down the upper portion of the chimney making sure to have more length than I needed and drilled a hole to match the original one.           Following that, I parted off the new chimney from the parent stock and made the end look nice. It looks like a tiny top hat! With that done I epoxie...