Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Tuba overhaul web page completed


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Posted by JoeS on February 09, 2003 at 16:19:57:

In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Tuba overhaul web page completed posted by Daniel C. Oberloh on February 09, 2003 at 15:32:06:

I will admit to using a "Dent Eraser"...well maybe not, but "a-very-strong-magnet-stuck-to-a-cylindrical-chunk-of-steel".

Here are some observations that I've made through limited use:

- The idea of having any real success using the round ball bearings that Selmer-Conn supplies with their "tool" is only an..."idea". Further, the concept of buying a magnet, a 6" hunk of 2"-diameter cold-rolled, 4 large ball bearings, a few sticky-backed pads, and a plastic clarinet case for $500 dealer-net is (regardless of its function) humorous (at least to me).

- If one uses "real" tools (in other words, proper steel dent "barrels") a super-strong magnet has a good chance of smoothing out many dents perfectly (or if not perfectly - almost) - if used with extreme care and caution. In fact, I've begun occasionally using my own magnet "rig" for some portions of "serious" restoration work of tuba bows - again with "real" barrels, rather than el-cheezo (spherical) ball bearings. (Being spheres, ball bearings simply don't work well at all because they only contact the damaged interior of a dent at one tiny point, rather than over an area...Then there's the inherent problem of the spherical ball bearing teeter-tottering on either side of the actual dent, creating bulges in previously-undamaged areas.)

- Yep, a magnet coated with a pad will scratch up a horn, but at least 60% of the time the places where tubas are dented are also already badly scratched and cut and/or missing their lacquer.
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There's still a 4V Reynolds Contempora in my store (larger-than-King 4/4 tuba) on which I used my magnet-&-barrels. I took the bottom bow off of this tuba and did "the whole nine yards" (unsoldered the cap & wire, dent machine, etc.) there, but on the rest of the instrument I used magnet-and-barrels (to make sure that I could afford to keep the selling price of this tuba below $2000 - again economics and practicality lifted their ugly heads. Well over 90% of the dented-and-repaired areas on this Reynolds were lacquer-less, so any light scratching was of no consideration since we buffed and "spot-lacquered" those places (again, selling price under $2K) anyway when we were finished. I could post pics, I guess, just to show that the magnet thing DOES work doggone well WHEN (again) used with REAL dent BARRELS and NOT Conn-el-cheezo ball bearings.

Ironically, I just bought one of those all-creased-up old 16-1/2" Mirafone bells from a colleague for $50. It does have one spider crack that could be brazed up, but... ...this Mira bell is probably going to be chopped up and its throat section used to replace the curved "recording" section of the detachable bell on the Reynolds Contempora with a straight section - to satify an interested potential buyer. (He's agreed to pay an additional $250 for me to convert it from detachable "recording" to detachable "upright" - provided he can get a P.O. from his school system.)


Final comment going off on a tangent: MAN!! The Reynolds Contempora makes a RIGHTEOUS sound!!! I have a Reyn-Cont. CC "chop" job in the attic right now (unfinished, obviously) with a King-made "Monster" EEb shorty 20" upright bell, a Reynolds Contempora bow-and-branches, and a 4-V Conn .734" valveset (that I "made" from two 3V Conn sousaphone valvesets). Just blowing on the MIGHTLY CONTEMPORA BBb beast makes me want to drag that project back out of the attic, abandon all of my current obligations to customers, and COMPLETE THE PROJECT. What a tuba it will be (based on playing this for-sale Contempora) !!!



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