Wednesday July 14, 1999
Every day is getting more and more difficult, because the work
is becoming more exact and mentally taxing. I am still managing to have
fun no matter what goes wrong. Today I built the ferule and all of the
garnishings that I will engrave tomorrow. Then I started to bend the
future elbows of the trumpet.
Before the elbows are bent they must be filled must first be filled with
a metal that has a low melting point so as to avoid crimping. The first
elbow was absolutely perfect. The second however, ripped along the seem.
Mr. Barclay tried to fix the elbow but it was to late. I did not
properly make an offering to the tube bending god. Tomorrow morning I
will make a new elbow joint.
Every day Dr. Burdick and I go out to lunch with some of the other
workshop members for lunch. It is a tremendous amount of fun. I have met
many interesting people. Some are grad students at I.U. some are honors
students like myself. Others are Professors at universities from Wyoming
to Montreal.
Today was a much more uplifting day than yesterday. I began working on
my bell at 8:30 a.m. After much hammering and annealing and burnishing,
the bell finally has taken shape. Bob helped me and said I needed to
have more contempt for the metal and work it harder. So, I did!
However, a theme that has been developing has been to know when to use
force and when to be extremely careful. I got a few crinkles in the
bell which is normal. Unfortunately, I hammered them down and now have
a fold in the bell. This will probably will have add some solder there.
The great thing about trumpet making is that these mistakes add
character and probably the trumpet is going to sound even better!
Bob showed us how to find the balance point on the small
straight tube,
cut it in half, and then fill it with hot, soft metal. This is all in
preparation for bending the pipe to make bows. These bows will then be
used to be connected to the straight pipes to give the trumpet shape to
the trumpet. Bob is handling the removal of the metals because they
have a low boiling point and if they were heated too much, they would
vaporize and poison us. Not to worry though, everything has remained
liquid. I have not yet gotten to the pipe bending. Today, I finished
making the parts for the pommel, soldering the small tubes and shaping
my garland. It was a very fun and productive day.