General Repairs and Maintenance

Minor Service:

Brush off dust, clean tenons, replace 2-3 pads, recork keys as required, general clean up, oil and regulate, test play.

General Service:

Remove all keywork, clean up keys and body, remove old oil from keywork, clean  and seal speaker/thumb tubes, repair tone holes and replace 4-8 pads as required, recork keys and tenons as required, straighten any bent keys, remove excess play in keywork, oil and regulate, test play.

Full Overhaul:

As for general service, plus completely dismantle instrument, polish keys,  oil bore, replace all pads and recork all keys and tenons.

Miscellaneous Services

Broken Tenon:

Snapped your instrument in half? Oops – well don’t despair, I can repair! Glueing the broken bits back together never lasts. I make a replacement section that fits well inside the broken joint for maximum strength. The bore of the new part is then carefully matched up with the existing bore and a new tenon turned and corked (with metal tip if required). The repair is invisible, permanent and as strong as the original. A fair old job but cheaper than scrapping the instrument!

Rotten Wood:

This can be a problem on bassoons, particularly on the low G sharp hole. I remove all traces of rotten wood, make a tapered ebonite plug to fit, then hand shape a new tone hole onto the plug and file and shape the inside to match the bore. Tone hole and bore are then varnished to further protect from moisture.

Broken Keys:

Tuning:

Tuning work is always done with the customer testing as I work. A combination of adjusting pad clearances and hole sizes greatly improves intonation. I use my own special recipe black wax for making holes smaller. The wax has excellent adhesion to the wood and is  usually invisible.

A broken tenon looks awful, but is repairable
provided it’s done properly. I took this picture
after I had tidied up the broken wood on the joint.

The insert goes well into the main body of
the joint for maximum strength and the
repair is invisible.