Recycling Oboe waste
We visited one of the UK’s oldest woodwind instrument factory ‘Howarth’s of London’. They have been making Oboe’s, Bassoons, Clarinet’s, Saxophones and more since 1948.
Jeremy, the owner, kindly showed us behind the scenes around their beautiful workshop in Brighton. First the ground floor metal milling machinery, then the woodworking shop and then the handmade metal keys studio.
The woodworking shop
The milling and extrusion rooms
Metal key working studio
The wooden tubes get rough cut and left to dry. A few years later they are turned to be an accurate circular shaft shape and the holes are drilled in for the metal keys to cover.
All the metal covers and caps are made by hand
The Milling process makes lots of metal shavings and metal dust. The wood turning makes black African wood dust. We loved their by products.
Jeremy kindly offered these waste materials to see what we could do with them.
We filled the grains with the wood powder to make the organic lines pop but still look like a naturally cast shadow. It has a stunning effect on the over all earthy feeling of this bed.
More shots of their work space. It was all custom built, arranged over years of optimisation; everyones work stations so unique and elegantly tooled up.
They use a variety of shaft materials a red African wood called Mopani, a rosewood called Cocobolo, Dalbergia Rosewood a warm red and the marbled swirly pattern is from Ebonite VulcanisedRibbentrop which is rubber powder mixed with colours.
Thanks again to Jeremy and the whole team for donating your waste to us and here’s to more collaborations in the future.