John EricsonI’ve been working on several projects at the same time, but one that has made a lot of progress recently is the Glassl bell horn.
To review, if you want to see it as the project started, photos are here.
Some steady progress brought me to the point seen below. Visually, some major progress! Lots of careful dent work, polishing with copper cream and Simichrome, careful fitting of parts. The brass ferrule in the first branch was custom made to the correct size! Etc.
But yesterday, after getting the valve section soldered back together, I found myself at a crossroads with this project.
I could bend the parts to meet, connecting the first branch to the valve section. That was not the issue. I also had a plan to get valve levers on the valve section. The big problem was …
Inconsistent bore
The issue is I realized that while the slides tubes on the valve section are .468, the tubing used to make the horn body was somewhere between .450 and .455 ID. This is not good! It should all be the same bore through the middle of the horn.
Backing up, that valve section, while it is of an interesting design and in good shape overall, it came from on an unmarked horn (probably eastern Europe) that was never intended to be professional level. In contrast, the Glassl bell, that is some real pro quality manufacturing. You can see in the “before” photos the overall horn was seriously well made, but was too damaged to ever rebuild to the original design. The original valve section being .440 bore as well — like a natural horn.
Let’s make a natural horn
I think it’s time to change course. As I shared with a friend/mentor today,
**I did a full studio natural horn project this semester, which students enjoyed. Played for Brass Area (Rossini Fanfare and two Haydn movements) using all 5 of the natural horns available to use (2 ASU, 3 mine). More would be nice.
**I don’t post much on Instagram, but the natural horn posts certainly get the most “likes” overall
**And people have asked me if I had a natural horn that I made that they might be able to buy
Not that I’m making stuff to sell, but I realize that there probably is more lasting value in making something that others will want to own. As a natural horn, the Glassl bell is really sized well. It can be a great natural horn.
So, I’m working toward a new plan on this horn and I have another French-style natural horn project in the works, an unmarked piston horn with missing pistons and such. Plenty of projects to work on until the summer heat closes down the shop!
And one other little update …
I’ve learned this year that ASU looks really favorably on my horn projects as research and creative activity! My take on this is that it is really hard to be interdisciplinary, and what I do spans multiple disciplines within the arts. Which is great, as with Jesse Boyd around to bounce ideas and projects back and forth with, I’ve been enjoying working on horn projects a great deal. Shop time is way better than working on the computer or scrolling social media.