How To Assemble a Bassoon

Here is an excellent attempt by John Bogenschutz on how to assemble a bassoon. Do you remember when you first had to put a bassoon together (crunch, scrape, bend!)?

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Valuable bassoon has a crack!

I would love to divulge a horror story about a bassoon that has a terrible crack in it

There are a multitude of scary pictures and stories online of people who have cracked or broken their bassoons. Type in 'broken bassoon tenon' into Google and you will see what I mean (caution not for the faint-hearted bassoon owner!)

However I am afraid I must disappoint. Dealing in bassoons over the years we have seen any and every type of crack in bassoons that you can imagine, but I am pleased to say that most of them are not of major concern. If you have a bassoon that has developed a crack you may be relieved to know this does not signify the demise of your beloved bassoon.

Cracks are easily repairable by a experienced bassoon repairer with the right equipment, and it will not usually cost too much to fix your bassoon. The most common places for cracks to appear in bassoons are the three connecting arms/tenons on the bassoon where the joints are attached together. In particular, the wing joint tenon, the bass/long joint large tenon and bass/long joint small tenon.

Below is a 'before and after' picture of a broken tenon on the long joint of a bassoon, and then the joint after being professionally replaced. This picture was taken by Richard Craig in Australia, a professional bassoon repairer who carried out the repair on this bassoon.

The options and cost for the permanent repair of a broken bassoon tenon are summarised as follows:

• Completely replace the tenon (as pictured above) with an aged maple replacement (costs about £150) - necessary if any wood has broken off or if there is more than one crack
• If there is only one crack, glue the crack and fit a brass tenon ring/cap to the end to hold it together (costs about £100)
• Glue the crack and secure further with a carbon thread around the tenon, and cover with cork (costs about £50) - we prefer to fit a brass or maple band on the end of the tenon as it looks neater and is arguably stronger

Please note, these are a mere summary - there are a lot of preparation, skill and specialist tools that are needed to fix a crack in a bassoon. We strongly advise you give this work to a specialist repairer. We have dealt here primarily with tenon cracks and breaks, as these are the most common. However, a crack can less commonly happen anywhere in the wood of a bassoon and you need to take this to an experienced repairer - there is very little a bassoon repairer cannot fix!

Once repaired your bassoon will be as good as new and the value of your bassoon will not usually be affected.

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