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Re: To swedge or not to swedge...

Author: Chris P
Date: 2010-08-26 01:19

You can wash the joints by submerging them in hot soapy water once all the keys are off (and remove the 8ve inserts as well), and use a small paintbrush (a 1" brush will do) with the bristles cut short to get into all the nooks and crannies.

A toothbrush should be alright, but make sure it's soft enough and you use enough washing up liquid with it. Then after washing, rinse it thoroughly and set aside to dry - if you rinse it in hot water it'll dry quicker.

Polish the keys with a silver polishing cloth - tear it into 1" strips and tie one end to a hook so you can strop the keys to get into all the tight corners and use the remaining cloth to buff up the key touches and longer barrels.

Any tarnish that can't be removed with a silvercloth can be removed with silver polish, but do make sure you clean all traces of polish off the key before refitting it.

If you can remove all the springs, do so as this will make it much easier to polish up all the pillars using a strip of silvercloth. Removing the springs will make sure you don't get stabbed by them and the springs won't get caught up in the silvercloth and broken.

The gaps between key barrels and pillars are most likely intentional - the gaps should get progressively larger as the key barrels get longer so when playing outdoors in the cold the keys won't bind up between the pillars as the plastic shrinks. I've got a Selmer Signet Soloist and the top joint C-D trill lever bound up between the pillars while playing on a dockside due to the cold, but it was easy enough to sort out once I got home by shortening the key barrel to make more end play between the key and pillars. Again, the gaps between key barrels and pillars are relative to the length of the key barrels, so the LH pinky ('feather') keys having the largest gap, the top joint C-D trill lever the next largest, and so on as the key barrels get shorter. If there is excessive lateral play on some of the smaller keys of the main action, then swage them to take out most of the play - but still leave a bit of 'safety' play.

If you are going to replace the pads, try to replace them with cork pads but do grind all the faces of the pads on a few grades of abrasive (start with 400, then 800 and finish with 1200) laid on glass to be sure they're flat so they will seat and seal onto the tonehole bedplaces better. If in doubt, use skin pads, but do learn to work with cork pads as most oboes tend to use cork pads almost throughout. Always glue the pads in with shellac.

As it's a plastic oboe, the tonehole bedplaces should be smooth and perfectly flat, though to be sure you can make a tool to level them if they're not. This is a piece of brass rod with the end machined flat onto which is glued abrasive paper. This is placed onto the bedplace and turned by hand to grind the bedplace flat. You'll have to make several different diameter tonehole toppers to fit all the different size toneholes. Luckily oboes only have a few size bedplaces so make a tonehole topper to fit each size bedplace - you'll probably need six.

You needn't worry about cleaning the holes through the threaded pillars, but clean all the non-threaded holes and key barrels with pipe cleaners dipped in alcohol to clean out the old oil from them.

Use key oil or sewing machine oil for the keys that are mounted on rod screws - preferrably oil that doesn't have any resin in it. Dip the screw thread into the oil and then fit the key - on longer key barrels and on the main action keys, dip the thread in the oil and add a few drops into the key barrel of the key that's the first to go on (eg. G# key on the top joint and RH1 key on the bottom joint) before pushing the screw through. Then make sure the oil that gets pushed out at the end pillar with the thread in it is cleaned up (place a piece of tissue paper there to absorb any oil that gets pushed out). Then add a single drop of oil at the ends of each key barrel to be sure the entire action is oiled.

On keys mounted between point screws, use a thicker viscosity oil (eg. engine or gear oil) in the ends of the key barrels applied with a needle to fill the oil sinks before fitting the keys.

Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.

Post Edited (2010-08-26 01:32)

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