Me - Am I capable?

In year 2000 I retired from R and D engineering to lead the idle life. With enough garden to keep Lyn busy I am free(?) to indulge in essential pursuits like making models, playing with computers, hacking out furniture, taking and developing 'proper' photographs with funny cameras with lots of mechanical bits to them, and anything, (almost anything) else I can afford to fancy.

I love music, trouble is I am useless when I try to play it. But the woodwind instruments are mechanical toys which appeal to me from many points of view; acoustics, history, woodwork, metallurgy, engineering . . . Problem! - the cost! If I could find scrap ones and restore them I could find out how they work. I should have enough engineering and modelling nous to mend a broken instrument once I learned what had to be done and how to do it. So I started buying forsaken instruments and restoring them to usable condition. To pass to the next interesting item I have to sell the one I have fixed up and played with. I don't aim to make a profit, just cover expenses to get another! Trouble is, I don't want to part with them . . .

I don't have the experience or training of good qualified repairers who have to cope with all that is thrown at them, but if I choose the instrument which suits my capabilities I can do a decent job. I can afford to spend a month on a broken clarinet which would cost more than a new custom built instrument if a repairer charged that amount of time. The professionals have nothing to fear; I get fed-up after doing the same thing more than two or three times so each instrument has to be different and they are getting difficult to find now! Anyway I do it for fun and if an instrument needs care that I cannot, or don't want, to give, then I don't take it on. This also means that I don't intend to turn out museum pieces or works of art. I can understand those that do, but I am too impatient to have the working instrument. So, if a feature needs attention to make it work properly I do it, thoroughly, so that it will last and be reworkable in the (hopfully distant) future, but if it is purely cosmetic then I don't spend more time than needed to do a basic job. So, if plating is safe (not likely to lift and cut fingers), it just gets buffed. A new key or a brazed repair may be re-plated but worn plating will not normally be renewed just to look pretty, althogh it will be cleaned and buffed. Maybe I'll find a Prestige bass that no one wants one day, then I will make a fuss of it! Wooden bodies do often get rather a lot of attention while they are stripped of the metalwork because the chance doesn't come round often, and they are usually worth it. I clean them thoroughly, inside and out, and oil until a durable surface is achieved. Two or three coats is usual, the whole process taking at least a week, and then I try to give another month to really harden off.
One thing I want to say is that I do my best to identify instruments properly but there is not much information about for older instruments so I might get it wrong. Another is that often by the time they get to me, most instruments have been 'fixed' by many hands. Sometimes this means that parts are not original, maybe not even the same make, and there is no way I can know unless I have seen it before. If I spot anything I will say.

So far I have restored six saxes, well over sixty clarinets, mostly alto and bass but one contra-alto, and numerous flutes and fifes. I have a soprano clarinet, an alto clarinet, a bass clarinet, an alto sax and a tenor sax I call my own and which I try to play. I use an electronic chromatic tuner to test pitch and like to look at sound waves on a waveform analyser program on my computer.
No one yet has reported problems with instruments I have done. I usually have an alto and bass or two lying about if anybody wants one.
If you have any comments or questions about any instruments I have mentioned,  please email.



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