DentFest
'04
Dent Machine Day in
Battle Creek
When 8 of the Midwest's finest French horn players
and builders convened in Ann Arbor for a "Fellows of the Geyer Guild" (FoGG) meeting; where did you think they would wind up for a day,
before going home?
The group from the left to right:
Paul Navarro, Chris Ross, the only female,
John Kowalchuck from Canada,
Stuart deHaro with the flat horn, Lowell Greer
with two bells, Steve Mumford,
vintage Z60 owner and Jack Werner.
Not Pictured, is Willard Zirk, who was up in the office
ordering some tools.
Steve Mumford, who owns a
40 year old Z60, called back about a week after
visiting Ferree's facilities and wanted to know if we would do a Z60 Dent Machine Clinic for him
and a couple of his French horn repair buddies. "Sure, the more the merrier."
Was the answer. As it turned out, it was 7 or 8, depending on how you are
counting.
Here Paul is learning the correct positioning from Gary, with others looking on.
Yes, THEY ALL took a turn to get the feel of the new Power Discs and
Rollers. Turns out they were all attending a French
horn "Geyer Guild" meeting over in Ann Arbor, about an hour's drive East along I-94. The Geyer Guild
(so named for Carl Geyer of hand built French horn fame) has been set up to exchange information and ideas about the
building of French horns to help to keep alive the art and craft of fine
instrument making by its members.
When they arrived bright
and early on Monday morning, they had between them about 6 or 8 badly crumpled and smashed French
horn bells (Holton Farkas, Conn 28D, etc.) and other trophies from the ages,
including a mellohorn. (pre-Kenton)
Well, after some
initial instruction, and having all the latest tooling explained, everyone took a hand at doing
some of the worst, most distressed bells I'd seen in a while; we even had to anneal one of them.
We mostly used the "New 30 degree Arm", the Z60-32 with the 5" roller
(Z60-28) because of the
way these bells were damaged; which was around and North of the seam.
The flares were also damaged a little but presented no special problems. These
bells had all been scrapped by someone and then salvaged by different members of
the group, here and there.
Paul and others found out first hand what an advantage it is, wearing
R22 gloves.
I knew Paul Navarro from his days teaching at Western Michigan University back in 1967-70, presently
he is involved in building a few horns. From the pictures above, you can see everyone was engaged.
From the picture below you can see Gary and Paul back about 1970 with some of
the Univ. of Michigan's Prof. Louis Stout's collection.
64.JPG)
Here is Gary, pictured with, from the Left: Louis Stout (1924-2005) (Fr.Hrn teacher
a Univ. of Michigan),
Paul Navarro (Fr.Hrn teacher at Western Michigan Univ.) and
a Fr.Hrn student (named Phillip,
I think. If you know him, let me know).
Ferree's Tools-"the most copied tools in the world"
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