Don't worry, that'll buff right out
February 8, 2022 6:33 AM Subscribe
And then, by the application of skill so advanced as to be indistinguishable from magic, it does just that. French Horn Repair part 1 (8m6s), part 2 (5m42s) and part 3 (11m28s) are but the tiniest taste of the balm for the battered soul that is Wes Lee Music Repair (YouTube).
It’s always amazing what a skilled craftsmen can do.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:04 AM on February 8, 2022
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:04 AM on February 8, 2022
The Tragic Tuba part 1 (13m51s) and part 2 (10m53s) include voiceover commentary explaining what he's doing and why.
"Sometimes that's what it takes: a bigger hammer."
I think there's something in that for all of us.
posted by flabdablet at 7:23 AM on February 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
"Sometimes that's what it takes: a bigger hammer."
I think there's something in that for all of us.
posted by flabdablet at 7:23 AM on February 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
Thoughts that popped into my head while watching this:
Man, that is a lot of effort being put into this by someone who knows what he is doing.
This restoration can’t be cheap.
That must be a really nice French horn to be worth putting that much effort and money into restoring it.
Who on earth let such a nice instrument get so beat up?
posted by TedW at 7:29 AM on February 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
Man, that is a lot of effort being put into this by someone who knows what he is doing.
This restoration can’t be cheap.
That must be a really nice French horn to be worth putting that much effort and money into restoring it.
Who on earth let such a nice instrument get so beat up?
posted by TedW at 7:29 AM on February 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
It's actually not a really nice French horn. In one of the videos, someone comments about this (it's a high school horn), and Wes Lee replies that the school wasn't in position to buy a new one, so he did what he had to do to give them a working horn.
posted by jonathanhughes at 7:46 AM on February 8, 2022 [9 favorites]
posted by jonathanhughes at 7:46 AM on February 8, 2022 [9 favorites]
Move over ASMR - I could watch this all day! It really did look beyond repair to me. His knowledge of how the metal will respond to different pressure, impact and torsion is amazing. To see one of the most beautiful instruments brought back to life like this is a surprisingly emotional thing.
posted by SNACKeR at 7:58 AM on February 8, 2022
posted by SNACKeR at 7:58 AM on February 8, 2022
His knowledge of how the metal will respond to different pressure, impact and torsion is amazing
Crushed Saxophone- Can It Be Saved?- band instrument repair (28m01s) features an astonishing range of manipulations, from arm wrestling the body of the saxophone back into alignment to using a burnishing knife to spread the metal of the bell like it was butter.
posted by flabdablet at 8:05 AM on February 8, 2022
Crushed Saxophone- Can It Be Saved?- band instrument repair (28m01s) features an astonishing range of manipulations, from arm wrestling the body of the saxophone back into alignment to using a burnishing knife to spread the metal of the bell like it was butter.
posted by flabdablet at 8:05 AM on February 8, 2022
I love how, even in the first minute, you can hear his frustration with whoever previously "repaired" this thing just from how his breathing changes. During the close-ups on some of the welds, you can hear that very distinct slow breath that might as well have been him saying out loud, "would you just look at this shit."
posted by mhoye at 8:17 AM on February 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by mhoye at 8:17 AM on February 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
Yechhh... Those videos fill me with anxiety. Back in the 90s, I worked as a trumpet maker in a small manufacturing shop. Occasionally, we'd get a repair to do, and they were just the biggest pain in the ass jobs to get even halfway right. Not to mention just how gross they often were. I have total respect for anyone who can do good repairs on brass instruments.
posted by 2N2222 at 9:29 AM on February 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by 2N2222 at 9:29 AM on February 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
I'll never forget the year the school district got all the high school bands very nice new baritone saxophones. Our band's new bari sax was in the orchestra pit during that year's musical, "Kiss Me Kate." Either during the dress rehearsal or the first performance, on Kate's line, "comb thy noodle with a three-legged stool," the stool bounced off the stage and directly into the pit, to gasps from everybody in the pit as well as several of the band members who in the production. The stool severely dented the horn and broke at least one braze-on. It was out of commission for the remainder of the school year, but to my amazement it was fully repaired by the next year.
Instrument techs are heros.
posted by fedward at 9:32 AM on February 8, 2022
Instrument techs are heros.
posted by fedward at 9:32 AM on February 8, 2022
Does anyone with experience know how often those kinds of dent removal and burnishing repairs can be done before the metal is so brittle and/or thinned that it isn't stable?
posted by starfishprime at 11:24 AM on February 8, 2022
posted by starfishprime at 11:24 AM on February 8, 2022
Yeah, I kept wondering why it doesn't work-harden and break.
posted by inexorably_forward at 1:05 PM on February 8, 2022
posted by inexorably_forward at 1:05 PM on February 8, 2022
Man, my first thought was 'what the hell happened to that poor French Horn?' and my second was 'I hope nobody was holding it when it did'. It looks like somebody threw it off a roof. Repeatedly.
Yeah, I kept wondering why it doesn't work-harden and break.
Instrument brass is very ductile and maleable, which is one of the reasons we make bent tube instruments out of it :) Zinc gives it strength, copper is very soft, and instrument brass is usually 70-85% copper; the mix alters the tone.
I've no idea how many times you could work the brass before it does eventually work harden, but my old trombone had small dents taken out of it several times without great difficulty.
French Horns aren't particularly cheap, but he must have done it at a serious discount for the high school student to be worth the effort.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 3:07 PM on February 8, 2022
Yeah, I kept wondering why it doesn't work-harden and break.
Instrument brass is very ductile and maleable, which is one of the reasons we make bent tube instruments out of it :) Zinc gives it strength, copper is very soft, and instrument brass is usually 70-85% copper; the mix alters the tone.
I've no idea how many times you could work the brass before it does eventually work harden, but my old trombone had small dents taken out of it several times without great difficulty.
French Horns aren't particularly cheap, but he must have done it at a serious discount for the high school student to be worth the effort.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 3:07 PM on February 8, 2022
I kept wondering why it doesn't work-harden and break.
Quite a lot of it appears to be because of careful choice of tools and good technique. Most of what he does involves using a compliant tool (sometimes his own hands or arms) on at least one side of the metal to avoid compressing and therefore thinning it; the aim seems to be to persuade it to return to its original shape in such a way that every little patch of metal only has to flex in one direction to get there. Deliberate stretching or flowing doesn't happen until he's mostly done and working out final dents, which by then are very small.
He talks a bit about avoiding work hardening in the Tragic Tuba video linked above.
posted by flabdablet at 7:15 PM on February 8, 2022
Quite a lot of it appears to be because of careful choice of tools and good technique. Most of what he does involves using a compliant tool (sometimes his own hands or arms) on at least one side of the metal to avoid compressing and therefore thinning it; the aim seems to be to persuade it to return to its original shape in such a way that every little patch of metal only has to flex in one direction to get there. Deliberate stretching or flowing doesn't happen until he's mostly done and working out final dents, which by then are very small.
He talks a bit about avoiding work hardening in the Tragic Tuba video linked above.
posted by flabdablet at 7:15 PM on February 8, 2022
Work hardening is a serious concern to keep in mind. A single repair isn't usually too big a deal, but for an instrument that gets repeatedly folded, the worked sections may have to be disassembled and annealed to prevent embrittlement. This is a major operation. If you want the result to look good, it gets into serious money. It might be easier to just replace whole sections if possible.
Most of the instruments I worked on weren't abused so much as just heavily used. I'd see weird stuff like serious corrosion from player's sweat/skin contact. I swear, some people seem to almost have some kind of electrolysis/galvanic thing going on, etching holes in tubing, or grooves in valve sections matching their fingers where they grip the instrument, almost like when you squeeze a lump of clay that deforms into your hand shape.
posted by 2N2222 at 10:03 PM on February 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
Most of the instruments I worked on weren't abused so much as just heavily used. I'd see weird stuff like serious corrosion from player's sweat/skin contact. I swear, some people seem to almost have some kind of electrolysis/galvanic thing going on, etching holes in tubing, or grooves in valve sections matching their fingers where they grip the instrument, almost like when you squeeze a lump of clay that deforms into your hand shape.
posted by 2N2222 at 10:03 PM on February 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
Wedding rings made from noble metals, perhaps? Brass makes a pretty decent sacrificial anode.
posted by flabdablet at 7:22 AM on February 9, 2022
posted by flabdablet at 7:22 AM on February 9, 2022
I'm impressed, but not surprised.
The reason is that when you see how a brass instrument is made (in this case a trumpet), you find that the repair process is largely the same, just slower.
I found a brass tech in Western Massachusetts who is fantastic. And he is also very much like every good brass tech I have ever known: he used to work in music stores then "retired" and does all his work in his basement. He's 86 and still very much active. I spend a lot of my sporadic visits to him asking him questions and I asked him if an instrument was ever too far gone to repair and the answer is pretty much no. He said he's repaired valve blocks that players have worn through. I've only had one repair that he wouldn't do: I have an old Wurlitzer straight cornet that my mother in law got me as a gift. It has a stuck second slide (it also had a number of other issues) and he couldn't unstick the slide. The process he used was to desolder the turn from the slide, then solder in a hank of brass he could use as a wrench then heated up the piece and turned it. This usually works on most stuck slides. He told me that it was so stuck that the force needed to unstick it would have crushed the brass like when you grab an empty soda can at the top and bottom and twist. To fix this for real, he would have to desolder the entire slide and replace it. Doable, but not worth it, especially on this instrument which is interesting only in that it's an old stencil instrument. As a playable instrument, it's got some minor leaks and the valve compression is not so good, so it is nearly impossible to play in tune. It's possible to improve all of this, but it never was a great instrument other than being an oddity and doing the work to make it a great instrument just isn't worth it. In the end, it will be substantially modified from it's original state and it will still just be an oddity.
Every other work he's done for me hasn't been magic but rather from 60 some odd years of experience. My main player had a first valve that was slow. It was barely perceptible, but it was there - when it came up the pressure on my fingertip was just not what it should be. He looked the instrument over, looped a length of nylon webbing through the first slide and gave it a few stout tugs then handed the instrument back to me. It was now perfect. What had happened was that the first slide had gotten very slightly bent and was now applying slight pressure to the valve. He also replaced the felts in the valve and gave me the old ones which he had marked so that if I didn't like the new ones, I could put the old ones back in the right order and orientation.
I brought him a cornet I had extensive work done on (it's an Olds Ambassador, probably from the 1940's. I had him strip the lacquer, pull some dents, shorten the main tuning slide, add a ring so I could kick out the 3rd slide to tune notes, and silver plate it). The Ambassador line was a student line of instruments and as such had a number of compromises that made it affordable, but apparently they used the same valve block and bells as the higher end models, so the tweaks I had done to the instrument just kicked up to the higher end. As an instrument, the Olds had good bones, whereas the Wurlitzer did not.
posted by plinth at 3:03 AM on February 10, 2022 [2 favorites]
The reason is that when you see how a brass instrument is made (in this case a trumpet), you find that the repair process is largely the same, just slower.
I found a brass tech in Western Massachusetts who is fantastic. And he is also very much like every good brass tech I have ever known: he used to work in music stores then "retired" and does all his work in his basement. He's 86 and still very much active. I spend a lot of my sporadic visits to him asking him questions and I asked him if an instrument was ever too far gone to repair and the answer is pretty much no. He said he's repaired valve blocks that players have worn through. I've only had one repair that he wouldn't do: I have an old Wurlitzer straight cornet that my mother in law got me as a gift. It has a stuck second slide (it also had a number of other issues) and he couldn't unstick the slide. The process he used was to desolder the turn from the slide, then solder in a hank of brass he could use as a wrench then heated up the piece and turned it. This usually works on most stuck slides. He told me that it was so stuck that the force needed to unstick it would have crushed the brass like when you grab an empty soda can at the top and bottom and twist. To fix this for real, he would have to desolder the entire slide and replace it. Doable, but not worth it, especially on this instrument which is interesting only in that it's an old stencil instrument. As a playable instrument, it's got some minor leaks and the valve compression is not so good, so it is nearly impossible to play in tune. It's possible to improve all of this, but it never was a great instrument other than being an oddity and doing the work to make it a great instrument just isn't worth it. In the end, it will be substantially modified from it's original state and it will still just be an oddity.
Every other work he's done for me hasn't been magic but rather from 60 some odd years of experience. My main player had a first valve that was slow. It was barely perceptible, but it was there - when it came up the pressure on my fingertip was just not what it should be. He looked the instrument over, looped a length of nylon webbing through the first slide and gave it a few stout tugs then handed the instrument back to me. It was now perfect. What had happened was that the first slide had gotten very slightly bent and was now applying slight pressure to the valve. He also replaced the felts in the valve and gave me the old ones which he had marked so that if I didn't like the new ones, I could put the old ones back in the right order and orientation.
I brought him a cornet I had extensive work done on (it's an Olds Ambassador, probably from the 1940's. I had him strip the lacquer, pull some dents, shorten the main tuning slide, add a ring so I could kick out the 3rd slide to tune notes, and silver plate it). The Ambassador line was a student line of instruments and as such had a number of compromises that made it affordable, but apparently they used the same valve block and bells as the higher end models, so the tweaks I had done to the instrument just kicked up to the higher end. As an instrument, the Olds had good bones, whereas the Wurlitzer did not.
posted by plinth at 3:03 AM on February 10, 2022 [2 favorites]
when you see how a brass instrument is made (in this case a trumpet)
That use of soapy ice inside the tubing to stop it crumpling while it's being bent is exceedingly clever.
posted by flabdablet at 3:29 AM on February 10, 2022
That use of soapy ice inside the tubing to stop it crumpling while it's being bent is exceedingly clever.
posted by flabdablet at 3:29 AM on February 10, 2022
That use of soapy ice inside the tubing to stop it crumpling
Certainly better than pitch for large scale production in terms of set up and clean up.
posted by plinth at 6:36 AM on February 10, 2022
Certainly better than pitch for large scale production in terms of set up and clean up.
posted by plinth at 6:36 AM on February 10, 2022
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