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!

Buffet English Horn Day 14 - 2/26/14

Today I started facing tone holes. I found the perfect glue to use for sealing the tone hole rims - a superglue that's not too thick or thin, so that I can wick a thin bead all the way around the rim. The facers seem to be working well, too. I got all the tone holes on the lower joint leveled and then dropped that joint in the immersion oiler. Tomorrow I'll take care of the lower joint tone holes and deal with that crack near the C# hole.

I also installed the new post I made and got to check its fit.

I don't know why that picture looks so washed out. Oh well. The post fit well and was the right height, so that was great. Unfortunately, while I was drilling the pilot hole for the pivot screw, the drill bit wandered a little bit, and I ended up with a hole that wasn't centered. So it looks like I'll have to start over with a new new post. This time the job should go much more quickly since I've already done it once.

Buffet English Horn Day 13 - 2/25/14

I got my tone hole facers today!

The machine shop I used was Peterson Machine in Chester Springs, PA. The machinist there, Tim, was great to work with and his work turned out very nicely. Not only that, but turnaround time was quick and he kept me in the loop. He said he measured the angles of all the tone holes and they weren't all the same, so he sort of averaged them out to make the facers. I'll be trying them out tomorrow and hopefully they match!

Buffet English Horn Day 12 - 2/24/14

This morning I threaded and cut off the post I started yesterday, then made a threaded jig to hold it out of an old tuba valve stem. Now, once I have the pivot screw hole drilled, I can polish and buff the whole thing without scouring away my fingerprints!

Later in the day I had a chance to talk to the machinist working on my tone hole facers, and he said they should be done tomorrow. Buoyed by that good news, I spent the evening corking keys.

Buffet English Horn Day 11 - 2/23/14

Today's job was making a new post. One of the posts on the lower joint looks like it was cut or ground down at some point, so it doesn't contact its key at a nice square angle. Unfortunately, I don't have the body of the english horn (it's still with the machinist making my tone hole facers), and I left the thread die I'd need at work. But that's okay, because I could still get some work done.

This is my lathe, a Unimat that I rebuilt last year. It's not perfect, but it runs pretty well and is perfect for working on small parts, especially something like this where I just need to use it to rough out the shape and then finish it with a file and sandpaper. It's not great at creating a nice smooth finish, although that probably has more to do with my meager abilities at machining and tool bit sharpening than it does with the machine's limitations. I am getting better though, and in the future when I can purchase a larger, more precise lathe it will provide an opportunity to continue developing those skills.

I used the lathe to turn the end of the brass rod down to the diameter needed for the post threads. Like I said, I don't have the die to actually cut the threads, but that'll be a quick process now that the rod is the correct diameter.

You can see above that I also used the lathe to rough out the shape of the post, but that put me at the limitation of my tool bit and skills, so from there I moved on to filing with bench motor.

Here it is, with the curves smoothed out and closer to the finished shape.

Finally, I roughed out the sphere at the top of the post, but left everything attached to the rod so that tomorrow I can grip it in the bench motor while I cut the threads. After that, it's just a matter of lining it up in the body, marking and drilling the screw hole, tapping the screw hole, and plating it.

Things always look rough after filing, but a little sanding and polishing left a very nice finish, which I can further smooth by buffing later.

Buffet English Horn Day 10 - 2/22/14

Not much to report today, as I spent a large part of the day traveling to and from the birthday party of a college friend's son. It was a great time, and while there I was able to finally pay for the english horn I've been working on for over a week (don't worry, I had the previous owner's permission to start working). She's another friend from college who also happened to be at the party, and it was nice to catch up a little bit and talk about the project. I'm grateful that she was willing to part with it, so that I could have the opportunity to give it a new life. 

Buffet English Horn Day 9 - 2/21/14

This is my immersion oiling tube, filled with oil. There are many like it, but this one is mine. 

I mean, I guess there aren't many like it, but there are surely a few out there.

What's an immersion oiling tube for, one might ask? It's for oiling the wood of an instrument when it's fully disassembled. The tube lets you dunk the instrument in and get it fully covered with oil, which can then be absorbed into the wood. Once I level and dress the tone holes on the english horn, I'll oil it and let it sit a few more days before doing final key fitting and padding. That's still a few days away, though.

There's a good deal of debate about the process of oiling wooden instruments, including questions about whether it's even necessary, and a lot of differing opinions on what kind of oil is best. To start from the beginning, though, there are reasons for oiling, whether you think it should be done weekly or only once in the life of an instrument. Wood starts as a living thing that either absorbs water or expels it depending on atmospheric conditions. Once the wood is felled, processed, and turned into a musical instrument, it still interacts with the humidity in the air. A piece of wood that's allowed to remain in a very humid environment soaks up a lot of moisture and can develop things like rot, mold, or fungus. On the other hand a piece of wood left in a dry environment for years will eventually give off most of its moisture and dry out. Dry wood is more brittle than humidified wood, so it's more prone to chipping and cracking. A very dry instrument that's suddenly subjected to a rush of warm, moist air from a player's lungs will start to absorb that moisture quickly, causing the bore to rapidly expand while the outside wall is still dry. It isn't hard to imagine how a crack can develop in that situation. By the same token, if a piece of wood suddenly absorbs a lot of moisture from the air, there's no way of telling what other things might come with it, like bacteria, mold, or any number of other kinds of funk. Therefore it's in the player's best interested to 

Musical instruments are regularly subjected to pretty severe changes in humidity, not only from the infusion of moist air from the act of playing, but also from the different locations a musician might use their instrument and the seasonal changes in humidity that happen in many parts of the world. Oiling helps slow the wood's reaction to these rapid changes, which prevents it from expanding or contracting too quickly. The oil fills voids in the wood, coats the individual cells, and creates a semi-permeable barrier for moisture to pass through, which it does at a gradual pace. This has the double advantage of preventing rapid expansion or contraction of the bore which can cause cracks, and minimizing the absorption of water vapor that may carry bacteria, mold, or some other kind of "funk." 

Of course in order for the oil to do its job, the wood needs time to absorb it, which can take hours or days depending on how "thirsty" the wood is. Wiping the bore of an instrument with oil and immediately cleaning it out will probably have a negligible effect, as almost zero oil gets absorbed. In fact, the only effect may be that a microscopic layer or oil gets left behind in the bore, which will prevent it from absorbing any moisture for a few days. That's why an instrument should always sit for a few days after a full immersion oiling, and maybe a day or so after oiling the just bore.

So which type of oil is best? The short answer is that I don't know. Most people agree that on grenadilla instruments, hardening oils like linseed or tung oil should be avoided. These oils gradually dry out and leave behind a coating that creates a vapor lock, preventing any moisture from getting to the pores of the wood. As a result, the wood can't respond to changes in humidity. (Ok, it doesn't completely prevent moisture from getting through, but the Berlin Wall didn't completely stop people from crossing the border either. That doesn't mean it didn't slow things down quite a bit.)  Another type of oil most people like to avoid are the commercially available bore oils available from some music retailers. These are usually petroleum based oils, particularly mineral oil. Mineral oil doesn't seem to be terrible for the wood, although it is toxic if ingested. From what I understand the main downside is that mineral oil doesn't contain the right fatty acids to be able to polymerize, so it doesn't stick around very long and doesn't really nourish the wood.

That leaves fruit/vegetable and nut oils. Fruit and vegetable oils are practically non-hardening, especially in the small amounts that would be distributed through the wood of an instrument, so that's a strong point in their favor. They can go rancid over time, but that assumes a standing amount of oil over a long period, so the risk of the oil in an instrument spoiling is minimal, and can be further reduced by adding antioxidants to the oil.

But even having narrowed down our list to these oils, there are still a myriad of options, and very little agreement on what is best. Olive oil and almond oil are both popular, but have their drawbacks. Olive oil can contain a lot of chlorophyll, which of course reacts with sunlight, and in this case can cause the oil to oxidize and go rancid. This can be minimized by using a golden colored extra virgin olive oil, which comes from riper olives that contain less chlorophyll. That still doesn't eliminate the possibility of oxidation, though. Almond oil, on the other hand, is difficult to find in a pure form because of the way it's extracted and processed. Those factors and other concerns mean that even these two popular oils have many detractors. I can't tell which is best, though I'd note two of the most popular products: Bore Doctor from Doctor's Products is thoroughly researched and developed by a chemist, Dr. Omar Henderson, and he is active in promoting the science behind his products, including its antioxidant and disinfecting properties. Naylor's Bore Oil is also a popular formulation, developed by Larry Naylor, a prominent veteran instrument repair technician. Both have strong following among repair techs. The formula I've personally started using in my immersion tube is one shared by Jeff Dening, and well-respected technician now working in Baltimore, and includes a couple different vegetable oils along with an anti-oxidant. In a year, though, I may be using something different, and a year after that something different again. I haven't firmly planted my flag in any camp yet.

Even after you can choose an oil, there's still the matter of deciding how to apply it and when. I oil an instrument if I'm overhauling it, after I've cleaned it and allowed it to humidify a little bit. Using the tube, I immerse it in oil to thoroughly coat every surface, then allow it a few days to absorb what remains on the surface. If it looks dry after that I'll oil it again. I don't go crazy with bore oiling as a regular maintenance practice, though. I do the immersion oiling after cleaning based on the fact that I've just washed the instrument a sucked a lot of oil out of it. The immersion process replenishes what I've taken out. Bore oiling is aimed more at nourishing the wood and hydrating it to prevent cracks. There's probably something to the idea that nourishing the wood with oil will prevent the wood fibers from breaking down over years of use, but the idea that oiling prevents cracking on an instrument that gets regular use is less convincing. If you haven't played an instrument in weeks, months, or years, and are planning to pick it up again, an oiling would probably be beneficial. The same if you're traveling with it to a place with a different climate. But if you're playing in the same locale on a regular basis, chances are your instrument isn't suddenly going to suck up a huge amount of moisture and split open one day when you pick it up to play.

If you are going to oil an instrument's bore regularly, it should be when the bore is clean and dry, and when it will have enough time to absorb the oil before you play it again.

I still have a lot to learn about oiling, but there is a wealth of information out there for those of us who don't have the wherewithal to do our own research or analysis. A few I've found helpful are:
http://www.shwoodwind.co.uk/HandyHints/oilingbore.htm
http://members.iinet.net.au/~nickl/wood.html
http://www.naylors-woodwind-repair.com/Publications/life-everlasting-for-a-good-clarinet
http://www.naylors-woodwind-repair.com/Publications/deterioration-of-grenadilla-instruments
http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=45168&t=45154
http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=92507&t=92393
Both threads from the Clarinet BBoard contain a lot of information from Dr. Omar Henderson