Cliff's N93 Saxophone Body Mandrel
The tool that got Cliff started in the repair
tool business, in the first place.
 <-NEW
 <-DAD's
There IS a story here. After graduating from the Conn Vocational School and
establishing his own shop in 1946, at age 23, Cliff took in for repair a really bad smashed and bent Baritone
sax.
Well, the first thing he did was go to a machine shop to have a body
mandrel made to do the repair from his drawings and specifications. This machine shop had many machines,
all working off of belts, pulleys, universal joints and drive shafts from up on the ceiling and
all powered
by just one BIG 15 h.p. electric motor about 30" in diameter. Do you
remember seeing these set-ups?
A couple weeks later the rod was ready. They called Cliff to pick it up and when he
got there the bill was $100.00! It had taken 3 days just to machine!
Did I mention the machinists' name was Adolph? Well, terms had to be
arranged and then the rod was taken back to the shop. That would have been
around $2,500.00 in today's money. Do you see the shock value here?
Well, we STILL HAVE That Original Rod, I have used it
without fail since the middle 50's, I loaned it
to Rick Britten when he bought my shop, back in 1986, and now it's back home. There IT is,
the one on the bottom, of the pictures above.
A few months ago my friend Steve Goodson called and
asked if we had or had ever considered making just such a rod because he had
about 6 Selmer Mk.VI's to do. I explained the
history of 'THE ROD' and the problems attendant with doing such a project and he,
of course said, he "Wanted one, anyway." It wasn't two to three hours later, when Sylvia
Ledon, wife of Manuel Perez
at Manuel Perez Woodwind Repair in Miami, Florida, called inquiring about the exact same
thing for her husband, who was in about the same boat. It was De'ja Vu' all over again.
So, Cliff,
Curtis, Steve and Keith calibrated which lathe and what tooling would be required to do such a massive
project and proceeded. We also made a couple of improvements to the original, that I
had always wanted to do.
So, the mandrel was drilled for the now oversized
holding shaft, which is now welded in instead of on and then Keith began spinning the
massive 66 pound modified bar in
the newest, largest, most accurate lathe we have. About three hours later, the
NOW 34 pound tapered lance came out of the machine, to then go
and be polished and final
finished. This baby is over 4 feet long and has to come in its own wooden
box for shipping.
Price only $292.50+s/h
~Unsolicited Testimonial~
Hello;
I just wanted to drop you a note about the N93 that I got from you. To briefly
sum this tool up, "it's 34lbs. of pure Heaven!" I used this gem on a 1921 Conn Baritone and now
the body tube is perfect! Thanks for the great tools and please keep'em coming!
Thank you;
Tom
Dear Tom,
Thank you for the kind words AND we'll do our best to
develop new tools and improve
on the old ones.
Thank you! Gary
Ferree's Tools- "the most copied
tools in the world"
|
