Brass and wind instrument repairers clean, adjust, and repair these instruments. They move mechanical parts or play scales to find defects. They may unscrew and remove rod pins, keys, and pistons and remove soldered parts using gas torches. They repair dents in metal instruments using mallets or burnishing tools. They fill cracks in wood instruments by inserting pinning wire and covering them with filler.
Repairers also inspect instrument keys and replace worn pads and corks.
Percussion instrument repairers work on drums, cymbals, and xylophones. To repair a drum, technicians remove tension rods by hand or by using a drum key. They cut new drumheads from animal skin, stretch the skin over the rimhoops, and tuck the skin under the hoop using hand tools. Percussion repairers also replace the bars and wheels of xylophones. Pianos and organs have thousands of parts made from wood, steel, iron, brass, ivory, felt, and sometimes Teflon that can be plagued by an assortment of problems.