Skip to main content

The Deagan Project: Part II









Escutcheon Pins, Washers and Isolators
Most of the pins were bent but easily straightened. Just tapping them on a bench vise did the job. I replaced the one wood screw with a sheet metal screw for the lost pin.
For the washers I used silicon caulking compound. Earlier this year I tried making sheets of silicon by applying caulk onto a plastic sheet protector. I placed another sheet on top and rolled it out to the desired thickness. After it cured I took a hole punch for the outside diameter of the size that I needed. The smallest punch was used for the center hole for the pin.


In the past I used catheter material for the isolators but when I went to a medical supply store to find the size that I needed I was asked for my doctor's prescription. A prescription?.....Are they afraid that I'm going to insert a piece of plastic into parts of my body just for the...….never mind. OK, so nix the catheter tubes. Since I was working with silicon I tried a different approach.
I took a length of wire that was 2 or 3 gauges smaller than the pins and inserted them into the tube of caulk. I did this twice more for a total of 3 coats to increase the thickness of the final tube. After it cured I used a razor knife to cut around the wire and pulled off each section. Since the hole from the wire was slightly smaller in diameter than the pin, when installed it expanded to the overall diameter that I needed.


The bars were done, the pins, washers and isolators were finished. I had only the felt rails to replace.
Labels:

Comments

  1. Far Side of FiftySeptember 2, 2019 at 8:41 PM

    perhaps they thought you were really strange? Made me smile:)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Amadinda

  The Amadinda is an African xylophone originally made from slabs of wood or even large sticks, with or without gourds for resonators. There was no reason for this project other than to see if I could make a simple mallet instrument. The box was made from plywood (which also acted as the resonators) and the bars were made from maple.  Since this was to be a true xylophone, the bars were all of equal width. Tuning was done by cutting the bars to different lengths and removing material from the bottom. Using a router I created a sort of 'stepped pyramid' instead of the traditional arc cut found on marimba or xylophone bars.  Cutting the underside is not only for tuning but it focuses the pitch and creates the characteristic overtones of the instrument. Since I wanted to play this with other 'Western' instruments, I chose to use a pentatonic scale of 2 2/5 octaves (C#,D#,F#,G#,A#,C#,D#,F#,G#,A#,C#,D#). Two people sit on either side of the instrument and strike the ends of ...
3 comments
Read more

Tambourine Shell Repair

A broken tambourine shell usually means that a new tambourine purchase is necessary. This can be exciting: I like getting new instruments, or sad: Any instrument that is damaged is a terrible thing. All tambourine shells can break, from my famous $14 variety to top of the line brands like Grover and Black Swamp. It's easy to replace a tambourine head but broken shells/missing pins and jingles usually means an early grave for the instrument. My early attempts at these repairs were stopgap measures until a new one was found. Wood or 'super' glue used on the shell turned out to be poor choices. It wasn't until last year that I really focused on shell repair. It happened during a Canyon Winds rehearsal when one of our tambourines exploded, pins and jingles were flying everywhere. Yep, it was the Resident Gorilla playing it. The shell had cracked between three sets of jingles near the head of the tambourine. We eventually replaced this with a Black Swamp tambourine but I s...
2 comments
Read more

Bandelier National Monument

 One of our very special places is Bandelier National Monument. We backpacked here for the first time in 1974 and returned nearly every year into the late 80's. As I mentioned before, we celebrated our 50th anniversary with a trip to the area in 2019. We also celebrated our 24th one there during one of our backpacking trips. We were joined by another couple during this 7 day trip. I had packed a small bottle of champagne, a checkered table cloth, and a candle (which was not lit because of fire danger).  The guest list included our friends and one passerby. One of the places we visited in the back country was called 'Shrine of the Stone Lions'. Two large boulders in the shape of mountain lions lying together front paws outstretched. A 20 foot circle of upright boulders surrounding them. We had visited this shrine many times on our trips and each time there were always many religious offerings: antlers, feathers, personal items. After so many hundreds of years it was nice to ...
2 comments
Read more