Manufacturing a saxophone neck socket

This was my first time making a neck socket, for a Conn New Wonder tenor sax that came to me for an overhaul. The original one had been completely trashed over about 100 years of use and abuse. The socket was severely out-of-round, the slot had been enlarged with what I can only assume was a dull lawn mower blade based on the level of precision, and the spud that holds the screw was chewed up. The tenon on the neck was, surprisingly, in good condition, but I could see no way to salvage the socket to make it seal with the tenon, so it was time to fire up the lathe.

Manufacturing the socket itself wast't a particularly complex operation. Some people prefer to start with solid brass rod that they face, turn, drill, and bore to the correct dimensions. For my first try, I decided to skip the drilling step and start with heavy-wall brass tube. Onlinemetals.com carries such tubing in a variety of sizes and lenghts. For this instrument I got a piece with an outer diameter of 1.25" and an inner diameter of 1".

I made two sockets that ended up on the scrap pile as I got my feet under me, but the third one fit the neck very well. It's probably due to my frustration over those first two that I neglected to take any pictures of the process, but here's a shot of the completed socket:

Turning those ornamental grooves at the bottom (to match the original) was probably my favorite part. The slot in the socket isn't cut until everything is assembled, which meant I had to make the spud (the part that holds the screw) and braze it on first. Making the spud and shaping it involved a little turning and a lot of hand-filing to get the right shape. Then I drilled a hole all the way through, further drilled out one half to be larger than the diameter of the screw, and tapped the other half so the screw could thread in. The toughest part of that process was making sure those areas actually met in the middle of the spud, so that when it was cut in half after brazing, one side would be fully threaded and the other side would have no threads.

Cutting the slot was done first with a jeweler's saw to ensure a precise, straight cut. Then that was widened with a Dremel tool and a cutoff wheel at low speed. The whole socket was then soldered to the instrument, buffed, and lacquered. It's easy to see that the color doesn't match the lacquer on the rest of the instrument, which has had decades to age and develop a nice dark color. That's something I'm determined to get better at. Color matching can be acheived by either darkening the brass with a chemical treatment or tinting the lacquer, which is currently beyond my abilities without the use of a compressed-air driven lacquer gun. This customer was OK with the colors not matching, and spraying clear lacquer over the socket ensures that it won't tarnish and end up looking worse than the rest of the instrument.

This project was a learning experience, and going over the results with a couple other technicians has already given me some tips to employ next time the need arises.