The owner of this clarinet requested a longer floor peg so that he could choose to sit or stand. His current peg is 6-8″ so I gave him two feet to work with. I took two runs at this:
My idea for the first run was to buy a 9/32 (.281″) rod to fit the 7mm (.276″) slot and to turn it down in the lathe. I knew I would encounter flex in the rod that would make consistency difficult, but I thought I could fight it by regularly re-chucking and turning the rod close to the chuck, unfortunately I ended up with a very subtle hour glass shape somehow which meant that the horn was able to grip the rod, but it would randomly drop down a couple of inches during play.
A friends idea for the second run was to buy another 9/32″rod and ream the peg holder to accept it. I will usually choose to avoid modifying the instrument rather than the new piece, but as I mentioned before it is a difference of .005″. I used a drill bit to get the size of the whole close to, but smaller than final dimensions. I then used an off-cut from the peg itself and ground three tapered edges into it.
This turned this rod into an exact sized reamer that I was able to use to bore out this hole. At this point the rod was a rough fit and so I finished the hole with 3 grades of lapping compound for a consistent, smooth fit across the entire length.
This case originally featured only one strap for the short peg, and so I added a second to accommodate the new long length.
Finally, I was asked to address a wobbly tenon. This tenon really needs to be done properly with a carbon fibre wrapping or sleeve, but as this customer still has warranty with Long and McQuade, I suggested he take them up on it. I was able to bulk up the tenon a little bit, but it is still not perfect. I hope he will get this addressed, although I don’t think it puts his horn at any great risk. Perhaps the regularly flexing of the tenon can ultimately crack something, but I think you would have to be working at that for years before that would actually happen.
I am still a big fan of this horn because of how light the key work feels all the way down to it’s low C.
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