I took my oldy Gemeinhardt with me in my last trip and had the cork changed -in front of me.
The tech did a good job and surprisingly fast:

- Took the old cork out (30 seconds)
- put a new cork in the lathe and made a central hole (1 minute including centering the cork in the machine)
- Installed the drilled cork in its mounting screw and placed(centered it in the lathe. (1 minute)
- Made 3 passes with lathe, using the round metal plate as a reference for the right size. Never measured the diameter. Finally he used a sand paper to slightly smoother the cork surface (2 minutes in total)
- took it out from lathe, placed clarinet grease on it, inserted the assembly in the HJ, pushed it to the right position no measuring, just checking with cleaning rod. (1 minute)

Played a few scales to test sound and declared it ready. (1 minute)

Total time: about 7 minutes. Seemed too fast to me, but the instrument sounds quite good. And I paid proportionally little money.

To compensate for the speed, I had to travel 2.5 hours round trip to his workshop (and 12,000 Km to his country!)

What doio you technicians think of this speed) Is it normal?