Buffet English Horn Day 15 - 2/27/14

I was able to stay late at work tonight to fix the error I made yesterday in drilling the pilot hole in my new post. And by "fix the error" I mean "make a new post. I though it would go more quickly this time, but really it didn't. That's ok though, because (spoiler alert) the new post turned out super great. 

I had to start by resharpening the tool bit on my lathe, which was already dull the other day when I was working on the first post, and by now was in really bad shape. I'm still learning to sharpen bits, so it took me awhile, but after a few false starts I got the bit nice and sharp. 

I just turned the threaded section on the lathe this time, then did all the other shaping by hand with a file in the bench motor. Last time, I cut the post off the excess brass rod before checking the fit and position in the body of the instrument. That resulted in a lot of marring on the face of the post from where I had to grab it with pliers to thread it in. So this time, I checked the fit and position before cutting off the excess. That way I could just grab the excess rod with a pair of pliers and scratch that up without touching the post. I also drilled the pilot hole and spring hole before removing the excess this time, and I drilled the holes much more carefully and slowly. Here's the hole thing after drilling, right before I cut off the excess.

Then I used my tuba valve stem from the other day to hold the post in the bench motor while I further shaped it.

After shaping and sanding, I checked the fit one more time before countersinking the back of the post to receive the pivot screw head, and facing the front to mate with the key.

Here it is after facing, with the key up against the now flat face of the post. It fit perfectly!

With the key removed, you can see the flat face. I don't have a mill, so I had to get a little creative to figure out how to cut a smooth, straight face. I used a hinge tube shortener and it worked very well.

Here's a final shot with the original post, the new post after buffing (it's ready for plating!) and the piece of brass rod I used to make it.

After that, I was on to wood working on the lower joint. Careful checking revealed that I needed to be a little more fastidious than I was with the upper joint tone holes last night, so I really took my time to establish a flat on each tone hole, face the outside with my new facers, then chamfer the inside with a set of pad seat reamers. I checked each one multiple times with a light in the bore, a 10x eye loupe, and a faced brass rod for reference, and I'm happy with how things came out. If I studied the results correctly, then padding should be relatively smooth this weekend.

Tone hole facing was the first half of wood working I had to do on the lower joint, and the second half was repairing that nasty crack near the C# tone hole where a post had jammed. I started by filling the gaps and pressing the wood back into its correct shape as much as possible. That was followed by sanding the surface smooth and adding more glue to fill the remaining cracks. Alternating those steps a few times gave me a nice smooth surface with a minimally visible repair. I suspect that after the wood is oiled, things will blend a lot more smoothly.

Here it is in progress.

And after sanding and smoothing.

And for reference, here's what it looked like before.

Now the lower joint is in the immersion oiling tube, the upper joint is drip drying, and tomorrow I should be able to fix the split in the upper D ring and plate the keys that need it. I'm (hopefully) only a few days from having a functional english horn!