Lesson Learned - 8/24/12

A neat little trick for soldering on silver-
First heat the joint a little bit, then flux it. Continue to heat it until any excess flux has burned off. Then allow the joint to cool, and use a graphite pencil to color a fairly thick outline of the part you're soldering. In my case, this meant coloring around the S braces and casing brace on a new trumpet leadpipe. Leave a small gap in the graphite where you want your feed point to be. Then proceed with soldering as normal - heat the joint and carefully flow solder in, using only your one feed point. The graphite acts as a barrier to prevent solder from bubbling out of the joint and getting on your otherwise pristine silver plating. Just be aware that if you flux the joint again, it will burn off some of the graphite and leave an opening for solder to escape. It's not a perfect fix, but it worked extremely well for me, and the graphite cleaned up easily. I'm not sure if my success was due to my being extra careful while flowing the solder or adhering closely to the "one feed point only" rule, but the graphite certainly didn't hurt except for adding about a minute of labor to each joint. I imagine it could be even more useful on gold plate, which is more prone than silver to allow solder to flow wantonly.

Lesson Learned - 8/14/12

On a saxophone today, I had a G key where the articulation arm that opens and closes the octave key was crashing into the high E key hinge tube. In fact the collision was so serious that it was preventing the G key from closing. When the articulation arm hit the E key, the G key was still about 1/4" from closing. My first though was "This is a crappy off-brand instrument, and I can't believe anyone was even using it. This kid must stand around on the marching band field and pretend to play." It really is a crappy off-brand instrument, but I couldn't even fathom the inoperability of it. I set the thing down to come up with a game plan while I worked on something else, and only later did I notice a huge dent under the rib that supports the upper G and high E key posts. "Of course!" I thought. The reason the instrument is in the shop is that it was dropped. The customer only asked to have the Low C key guard straightened and reattached (which was imperative, because it was nearly flattened). Foolishly I just went ahead and did that, then started making some minor adjustments to the instrument when I first came across the problem with the G key. Have I not told myself numerous times before that when the customer asks for a specific job, I should always fully inspect the instrument before starting? And I am doubly guilty because I knew the instrument had been dropped, and didn't even bother to consider that it probably sustained more damage than a busted up keyguard (although to be fair, it looks like the key guard took the brunt of the force. It was really busted up). Dropped instruments should receive extra-thorough inspections before starting work.
Alas, maybe I'll learn someday.

On another note, here's a story that APM's Marketplace program did on instrument repairs in New Orleans: http://www.marketplace.org/topics/life/new-orleans-musician-finds-niche-instrument-repair