Lesson Learned - 1/2/13

Aside from the lesson I am reminded of daily - that's it is surprisingly hard to keep up a daily journal - I learned today that Getzen trumpets have very soft bell bows. At least, the instrument I was working on did. I got a dent ball on the Roth tool stuck right in the very middle of the bow (90 degrees from the stem or tail), and blew out the tubing in the process of trying to remove it. I think part of the problem was the position. It seems to me that at that 90 degree spot, the Roth tool will be pulling the ball in a direction perpendicular to the direction it needs to go to exit the bore. Or it will be pretty close to perpendicular, closer than it would be if you were trying to pull the ball out from any other point in the bow. Whatever the reason, the ball got cocked in the bore and it was only through some very patient tapping that I was able to extract it. After that, I managed to blow out the bow in two other places closer to the stem, which is what lead me to believe that part of the problem is in the softness of the bell. I haven't blown out tubing that badly in a couple of years. Part of the problem may have also been that I was jumping dent ball sizes, and in retrospect I guess I was doing it pretty haphazardly, so it would have been easy to grab a ball, not realize how large it was, and push on it with a little more oomph than was safe.

In my defense, though, the owner of the trumpet had already wanged it up pretty good by trying to pull out a stuck mouthpiece, the result being that they scratched the hell out of the mouthpiece, ripped the leadpipe off the instrument, and dented and bent the bell. My guess is that they were pulling pretty hard with a pair of pliers in one hand while holding the trumpet in the other, and when the leadpipe broke off, the force with which they were pulling on the trumpet caused them to slam it into the corner of a table. Like when you're trying to pull the cork out of a wine bottle and it finally lets go, and you end up dumping wine all over the floor and smashing myself in the face with the corkscrew.