Posted by Wade on December 15, 2003 at 18:26:00:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Photo Test posted by Rick Denney on December 15, 2003 at 17:51:24:
I thought about annealing, but it would have destroyed the lacquer - er - what was LEFT of the lacquer. And it would have taken too long. If it had been my call, I would have turned down the job as unprofitable, but the boss negotiated what corners to cut with the band director. I'm just the shop monkey that hits things with hammers and drools on my bench on an "as needed/as available" basis.
I did the work to the bell with low tech stuff"
Large Rawhide Mallet
Bell Anvil
12" Hand Burnisher
Axle Grease
Wax Paper
NO Z-100 DENT MACHINE WAS USED (ours had no shoes that fit this tuba - rats!)
In the before and after photos, you can see that the worst stuff was the rebuilding of the valve slides. You can see at least five of my braces in the linked photo. In the first photo, notice the lack of braces, skewed angles of the tubes, and the "banana" shaped 1st slide leg. The real nightmare was the 3rd slide, which was so badly dented and twisted that I had to use our trombone slide version of the "Fast Eddie" (like a rolling pin that fits smaller tubing) just to get them to come apart.
Since I play the tuba and have so much fun working on my own horns, they think that I like doing this sort of meatball surgery. I rarely do smaller brass unless it is really bad (like this tuba) or some custom work. What I really like to do is to convert trombones over to Thayer valves. That is weird; I know. But it is just fun for some reason. Leadpipe and bell work are okay too. Valves and bells are what I am best at. And machining parts from billet (or otherwise hand-crafting them) is also fun.
Wade "got to uncrush the bell of Mr. Daellenbach's 621 CC after it got to meet the Jackson Airport Apes a couple of months ago" Rackley