Ozwinds Brass and Woodwind Workshop in Moorabbin, Victoria, Australia | Musical instrument store

Ozwinds Brass and Woodwind Workshop

Locality: Moorabbin, Victoria, Australia

Phone: +61 3 9578 6663

Address: 55 Cochranes Rd 3189 Moorabbin, VIC, Australia

Website: http://www.brassandwoodwind.com.au

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20.01.2022 Making a bassoon bell ring from corian. These rings were traditionally made out of ivory and I'm glad we're not using that material as it's very bad to turn both for your respiratory system and the smell is like burning hair. I know as we've had to remove a couple of them. You can't really order a standard bell ring off the shelf unless it's a current production model and you're only guessing how long it may take. This way we are also able to customise it to fit the bassoon perfect. While it is a lot nicer to turn it is still incredibly messy. I find the 5C expanding collets with soft aluminium inserts to be very useful for this job to profile the ring. Job's done, oh wait, I still have the mess on the lathe to attend to

18.01.2022 Great to be back into the swing of things. We already have had some challenging projects come in that will be great to share. Decided to wear my retro workshirt today. Think we had these shirts in 1990.

14.01.2022 One from the collection - A Thomas York ‘Perfection’ model cornet. It is the only one that we have ever seen, and it would be rare. It was made by Thomas York who is one of only two Australian brass instrument manufacturers that have operated in Australia. He emigrated to Australia from England in 1891, and set-up his workshop originally in Russell St before moving to Swanston St. Our best guess is that this cornet was made in 1901. No idea how many he may have made, but ou...r guess is he started at #2200. It would have been his deluxe model going off the fact it is ornately engraved. Little butterflies are engraved from the bell flare down to the bell crook. It needs a fair bit of repair work but there are some very difficult repairs required to get it sorted. York also repaired musical instruments and sold second-hand instruments. The first instrument that actually started my collection 7 years ago is an old French cornet made by Courtois in 1861. What is unusual is that there is a little badge on the bell repaired by T. York. I had no idea who he was at that time, but he sure had a big ego to solder his a badge promoting his business onto someone’s instrument! It is cool we have that history and it is a nice gem of Australian manufacture related to a niche industry.

09.01.2022 Split seam on a saxophone neck. We probably see only one of these a year, so it is not an everyday repair. Due to saliva/moisture, the seam can slowly deteriorate due to dezincification and eventually fail. The reason it fails at the seam is because the brazing material used is generally higher in zinc content to lower the melting point to assist manufacture, but this makes it more susceptible. It is a difficult repair as the seam is usually quite contaminated and it needs to... scraped and cleaned properly to expose new material. Flowing silver solder can therefore be challenging but the trick is in the prep-work. This neck had an extra level of challenge as someone had previously attempted to soft solder the split and all evidence of soft solder must be removed as this contamination can be disastrous when heated to hard solder temperatures. Once brazed, I work harden the material to temper the brass and I turn a ring on the lathe to add support to the tip which is soft soldered in place. As a bonus, it helps cover the chip on the very end of this neck. All in all a satisfying job. See more

06.01.2022 Using diatest bore gauges to measure and map out the casing of a euphonium today that was experiencing valve problems. Each division represents 0.0001". Excellent tool for sweeping the internals of valve casings to work out what's going on and how to approach glitchy valve actions caused by the casing - don't know how we worked without them.