One-Handed Saxophone

At the end of January, I had the rare and coveted (for me, at least) opportunity to travel to Wisconsin and spend a few days in the shop of Brian Russell doing some extensive modifications to a saxophone. I've known Brian for the past few years and even before then I knew his work, which is widely known among other technicians for being innovative, elegant, and incomprehensibly precise. I'd describe him as a "technician's technician" if he wasn't so accessible and so good at explaining things in layman's terms. He also has the sort of calm, thoughtful demeanor I aspire to, so when the opportunity came up to work with him, I almost literally jumped at it.
The instrument we modified is for a player who has limited use of his right hand, so that it can't be functionally used to play. He needed a left-hand-only instrument, of which Brian has designed and built several. That was advantageous, because it meant he already had a pretty good idea of what modifications we needed to make, we just had to work out some details and carry out the actual construction. The design balances functionality with practicality and economics. To build an instrument that would allow the left hand to play the entire range of the instrument would be incredibly complex and prohibitively expensive, plus it would require the player to learn an entirely new fingering system. (However it can, and has, been done, by Brian himself: http://www.russellwinds.com/onehandsax.html). So the design we used allows the player to play from Low E all the way up to the top of the normal range-High F, fully chromatic. He won't have the low range of the instrument, from Low Eb down to Low Bb, but the fact that he'll have just over two full octaves will allow a great deal of expression and versatility. By swapping out some of the original keys for OEM replacements and some new keys made from scratch, we got the added benefit of the work being completely reversible by any skilled technician. All they'd need to do is take off the new keys and reinstall the originals, then do a normal set up.
Put as simply as possible, the new design repurposes the left hand pinky touchpieces to operate F#, F, and E, which would normally be operated by the first and second finger of the right hand. C# becomes F# (by closing the E key, which is already designed to close the F#), B becomes F, and Bb become E by closing both F and E through tabs connecting those touchpieces. We also manufactured a mechanism to operate the High E key with the crook of the left hand, just like the other palm keys. We were able to purchase new E and F keys, and the G# pinky lever, but all of the other left hand pinky touchpieces and levers had to be made from scratch. Brian has developed and appropriated a lot of techniques to make the job go smoothly, like using temporary adjustable contact points between the new levers and the keys, to find the right balance between feel and travel, or “throw.” He also builds key arms so that they can be moved around before being brazed in place, to again allow adjusments to be made on the instrument. By making prodigious use of machine tools, he’s also able to cut down on manufacturing time, though most of the fitting, filing, sanding, and tweaking still must be done by hand.
We spent two very full days and another 8-hour “half” day working on the project. At that point we had built all of the parts we needed, and had opportunity to dress, buff, and lacquer all of the pinky keys. I headed back to Pennsylvania with the instrument and most of the keys, while Brian hung on to the High E mechanism, which still needed clean up, buffing, and lacquering. He’ll also build a handle for the player to stabilize the instrument in his right hand (which still has sufficient control to be able to grip). Finally, he’ll make some “dummy” key cups to hang over the Low B and Bb tone holes, since we took those keys away and used their positions to hold the new touchpieces. Once that’s complete he’ll ship all those parts to me for final assembly and set-up.
Even with the benefit of a well-outfitted machine shop, building keys by hand is a time-intensive and laborious process, especially to make them look as neat, clean, and precise as factory-made keys. The most complex part of the job, though, is to perfect the angles of those keys, contact points, and touchpieces so that parts mounted on different axes travel the same distances, and that pads move together and seal against their tone holes at the same instant. These are factors we take for granted in mass-manufactured instruments, because the design work and engineering has already been done. But to do that engineering, even with the firm foundation Brian can provide with his prior experience, made this the most complex and mentally challenging repair I’ve ever done.
The days were busy and illuminating. I learned a lot, and relearned some skills that I thought I knew. I barely had time to take out my phone, but I took as many pictures as I could in the time available. These represent a few small tasks in the larger project. As of the writing of this post, we're not done, so I'll try to post more pictures of the finished instrument after Brian sends the rest of the completed parts and I get everything installed.

Using the mill to drill holes for the roller screws in the new touchpieces. A rough outline of one of the touchpieces, which will eventually be cut out of this piece of raw brass, is visible in red. We made the tracing using one of the old touchpieces.

One of the new touchpieces mounted on its arm, which is mount to the hinge. Everything in this photo is new and hand made.

Using the mill to cut out the rough shape of another arm. A tracing of the final shape is visible in red marker.

The arm fully cut out, with the paper template that was shaped on the instrument, then traced onto the brass sheet. Using paper templates, which can easily be cut or discarded and replaced, helped us ensure we had the right geometry to navigate around any obstacles and create the most efficient connections, before making a single cut on the brass sheet. Heavy gauge brass is costly and time consuming to cut/shape, so minimizing wasted material and time is critical. We only had to scrap and remake one part over the course of the whole job.

Two of the new touchpieces.The right-hand touch is mounted on the arm shown in the two previous photos. 

The short pin protruding from underneath the arm (actually the top of the arm, it's just upside-down), is a temporary contact point used to find the final location for a permanent pin, which will engage the E key and close it when the lever is pressed. The temporary pin is soft-soldered to the arm, so it can be heated and moved. Moving it further out on the arm, or up and down, changes the way it interacts with the key by altering the distance the lever travels and the amount of force it requires. Once the ideal position was found, we set the lever in the mill, as seen here. Then a hole was drilled through the arm, right through the center of the pin, and a permanent pin was fit to that hole and brazed in place, ensuring it would be in exactly the same position as the temporary pin was.

The arm is visible at the bottom of this picture, with the aformentioned hole drilled through.

Using a bandsaw with a specialized blade to cut out the shape of the new E touchpiece, which matches the shape of the old Bb touchpiece. This blade cut through 1/8" brass like it was actual butter.

Brian taking an appropriate level of enjoyment from removing a roughed-out key part from a large block of brass. The part needed to be milled, but was too small to secure in the milling vise, so he soldered it to this large block, then fixed that in the vise. It worked perfectly!

The pinkish post ball near the center of the picture is the only non-reversible modification we did, as we had to braze that new ball onto an existing post to make one of the new levers shorter than the original. If someone wanted to reinstall the original keys, that ball would be in the way. They could cut it off if needed, I guess, but whereas everything else can easily be swapped between old (full functionality) and new (left-hand-only), this one piece would require major work to change. The pink color is a byproduct of the high heat used in brazing.

The new touchpieces and levers, mounted on the instrument and roughly set to height.

All the new parts for the F#/F/E mechanism after assembly, pickling (removing scale that builds up during brazing), dressing, buffing, and degreasing (then a little more buffing and degreasing). They're ready for a coat of epoxy lacquer.

Brian and I with the partially completed sax. The new keys pictured above are mounted, but the High E mechanism is not, nor are the "dummy" key cups for the bell tone holes. He'll finish those up, along with the handle, and send them along for me to do final installation and set up. Of course, you can't see much of the new mechanism in this picture, because we took it pretty hastily and didn't bother to stage anything, as we were about to jump in the car and head to the airport so I could catch my flight home. Like I said, they were full days!