Current Projects

Currently listening to: Hummel Trumpet Concerto - Jessica Wood

So I've uploaded a lot of new photos of both personal and project horns.

The last project I finished was a particularily interesting one. I somehow got ahold of a very old Bach Mercury Model. The horn was very close to junk: there were many tears and punctures in the brass; the bell was detached and crinkled; none of the slides worked and it was missing many components not to mention all of the un-soldered joints.

I had a monumental but fantastic time resotring this 86 year old horn. It was very theraputic and really inspiring to see this horn come back to life.

First I had to reshape the bell and patch its crook in 2 different spots. Using a dent machine and with lots of careful practice on other horns, this bronze bell started to look like it was intended.

Next was the many numerous slides and pipes that had to be resoldered and have dents removed. After finishing dents I moved on to putting an amado water key on the tuning slide where the original water went missing. Following this I had the difficult task of refitting the leadpipe to the horn and retro fitting a brace to keep the leadpipe in place.

Finally the horn's bell had to be fitted back onto the horn with the completed valve block. This proved harder than imagined because the braces had been crushed and no longer fit where they were supposed to so with this problem I devised an interesting solution.

I managed to take the braces apart and refit them to the correct size. This painstaking process allowed me to finally put the horn back together in a whole state for the first time.

After all of this I had to clean, polish, and align the valves. This process didn't take long and soon enough the horn was in great shape. The horn has a very tight sound and has an amazing articulation response.

Sorry for the ridiculously long post but I wanted to be as detailed as possible. Other project posts will be spread out and shorter.