The Alphorn Experiment

A buddy of mine asked me if I would be interested in making an alphorn (AKA Alpine Horn) for him.  It sounded like a comical challenge so I told him I would give it a try.  I did a blog on my journey to design and build it  so you can browse through that to see the details of the design and build process if interested.  Having only seen these in pictures and videos, I relied on a couple different online sources as well as pictures on websites that sell them to come up with the dimensions and design.  The assembled length is nearly 12' long and the diameter of the bell is about 9".  I chose to make it in sections because it needs to be transportable but this also made it possible, easier anyway, to use my CNC machine to shape most of the pieces.  The straight sections are made of 2 identical halves which are glued together and the bell section is made of 6 layers that were individually machined on my CNC and glued together.  The wood is primarily Douglas fir with one piece of SYP.  The joint sleeves, mouthpiece and the mouthpiece adapter were made from salvaged Bradford pear that I turned on the lathe.  

The biggest challenge was making joints that will slide together easily but hold together while being played.  The initial design using just the external sleeves turned out to be too wimpy.  I knew this might be the case when I designed it.  To get better joints, I made longer internal sleeves that gave me much better joints.  Both internal and external sleeves are fit with "crubber" gasket material to insure no air leaks and provide tighter joints.  I had hoped to use the real cork sheets like those used for the joints on woodwind instruments but sheets large enough for the these joints was going to be expensive.  The crubber is coated with woodwind cork grease to help them slide together easily.  One joint is a little looser than it should be so I may have to fix that for my friend at some point. 

Anyway, this was a really fun and challenging project. I used everything from hand planes to CNC machine to build it.  I am not sure I will ever make another but I already made some design changes that should make for a easier and tighter joints should I decide to.

Thanks for looking.