Errors in 'Westfield'

The main plot of Helen On the Run was written around 2000, when I was still in College.  I was steeped in the ideas—of valveless horns and trumpets, and the manufacture of these instruments—but I knew nothing about them; I hadn't even looked at one of them up close!

Helen, as you know, was roped in early on, into helping with a workshop that manufactured authentic instruments of the 17th Century, especially string instruments, which I knew something about.  This is how Helen gets sucked into instrumental music, whereas she had been a singer to start with.

Recently, though, I got to see a brass instrument up close, on several occasions, and the reality about the manufacturing process struck me.  First, I think that a long,  triangular strip of metal—bronze, I imagine—has to be cut out.  Then this strip has to be bent into a conical shape, by hammering it around a wooden, conical form.  Then the two long edges must be sort of folded over like an enclosed seam, and hammered flat, and heated until it's seamless.  That will form the main tube of the instrument. 

Next, the tube must be very carefully bent into a coil-—for a horn—or the coiled trumpet shape that you would have seen, except that there are no pistons or valves.

This entire description has been surmised by just what I saw; I don't know whether the instruments were made in sections, and then joined by heating; that process would be unavoidable if either section had very tight coils.  Today, the mouthpiece is made separately; that was probably how they did it in the 1600s as well.  (This is all fabulously interesting, but all my conjecture is just based on guesswork.  Come to think of it, that's what conjecture is.)

My ignorance overflows into others of my stories, too.  Alexandra helps a blacksmith, and a lot of what she does is very similar to what I've described above.  In Galaxy, Helen gets her friends to help with instrument manufacture, but by this time I was quite a bit older, so I finessed some of the details that could have caused errors.  But there was no horsehair* on the ship, so I blithely wrote that they looked for a synthetic substitute.  Yay for Science Fiction.

None of these stories have been carefully researched, so please forgive me!

With love, 

Kay

*Horsehair: if you're wondering what horsehair has to do with anything, violin bows are made with horsehair.  In fact that's how bows for all bowed stringed instruments are made.