I Fix Things

(Mis)adventures in the world of musical instrument repair. Also lots of photos of shiny things, and assorted other musical mischief.

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Finger button broke when I unscrewed it from the valve stem. Annoying but it happens sometimes if things are very corroded and brittle. Except I did not use that much force on this one, and taking a closer look at the break didn't show the shiny surfaces I was expecting to see from twisting something until it snapped.

That texture sure did look like something else though, and when I started drilling it out my suspicions were confirmed:

Those sure as shit ain't brass shavings. That is fucking superglue.

At some point in the past someone snapped the threads off the finger button and just... glued it back on. And it held for a while too, until I had to disassemble everything for a full cleaning and tried to unscrew it.

Thankfully the glue hadn't worked its way very far down into the threads, so drilling it out didn't take too long.

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Mm, chunky.

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What I needed the big pop-rivet tool in the previous post for:

Original rivets ripped out of one end of both backpack straps and one side of the secondary handle. My usual (and preferred) method to repair ripped-out case hardware is to go through from the inside with bolts and large washers to spread out the forces and make the repair stronger than the original. Unfortunately that was not an option here due to case construction. I would have had to almost completely disassemble the interior to access the wood frame, and that was more time and effort than this case was worth.

So, pop-rivets. The biggest ones I could get at the nearest hardware store. Too big for the regular rivet gun, hence the new bigger one.

6.4mm diameter, 19mm overall length.

Handle back on.

Backpack straps anchored in place again.

Case also had some torn seams. Fixed those too.

I see lots of people in the musical instrument repair field gripe about how much they loathe case repair, so I guess I'm a bit of a weirdo in the fact I kind of enjoy it.

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I love repair jobs that give me excuses to acquire new tools.

Behold my new rivet gun.

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Grungy trombone rotor time again.

Moves a lot more freely when the rotor and casing aren't full of cacified gunk.

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Locking washer was keeping the broken piece mostly but not completely in place, so the valve was still working as it should but felt very off the whole time.

Also the valve casings look like this, which is a related but separate problem:

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You know it won't kill you to put more glue in the key cups, right?

I put a proper amount of glue in there and wouldn't you know it, I no longer needed that ridiculous shim to get the pad level with the tonehole.

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Had to send this monster through the ultrasonic tank four times, to do a different quadrant each time, because it was too big to fit all at once.

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Besson trigger springs I hate you so much.

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CarolBrass trumpet that tunes at the receiver like a flugelhorn, rather than having a main tuning slide.

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Well that's a great price break if I ever need ten billion of those I guess.

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Taking a break from brass and woodwind to do a bit of percussion.

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Done

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Taking a break from brass and woodwind to do a bit of percussion.

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Definitely time for a new pad on this key.

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If you're gonna use one of those leather wraps on your instrument, maybe clean under it sometimes?

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The bell engraving on the King Zephyr sax in my workshop right now.

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Palm F key on most saxes: cutouts underneath to arch over the palm D# hinge tube, and the D# cup offset to be out of the way.

Palm F key on the King Zephyr: wⁱᵍgᒻʸ