Posted by Dave Erickson on October 10, 2002 at 22:38:15:
In Reply to: Repair question posted by Chuck(G) on October 10, 2002 at 13:53:16:
Chuck, I like your question. I'm working with the same sort of issues,
trying my hand at tuba repair for the first time. I've successfully
silver-soldered the linkage mounts on an old German tuba, and silver-soldered a
crack in the first valve elbow, along with some lathework and fabrication
of braces. However, aside from soldering and lathe-work, my skill is so-far untested.
I tried a strong magnet plus ball bearings to remove dents from a fourth valve tube,
and after a lot of strenuous work and time, made some progress, but didn't get
it repaired to my satisfaction. Still ahead of me are some bad bell crumples,
dents in the bottom bow and in some of the interior bows.
I've visited the Ferree's website (don't have their catalog yet), and the tools look interesting, but I can only speculate about how they are used. The Finke website has a very clear series of pictures that illustrate tuba manufacture, but after seeing some of
the pictures on the Ferree's website, I am left believing that dent repairwork is much
more an art than instrument manufacture. My thinking tends towards engineering, so when I
see a dented bottom bow, I wonder why there aren't tools available similar to portapowers,
which have a small hydraulic cylinder on a long tube, and various kinds of expanding mandrels capable of returning the tubing to its original shape.
My current plan is to do my own soldering (or unsoldering), and send the dentwork on to an
expert. Are there many good instrument repairmen who are willing to work that way? The labor involved in the soldering, buffing, re-alignment, fabrication of parts and mechanical problem resolution is pretty considerable, so my hope is that I could save a significant part of the cost of a complete overhaul. Yes, I often operate under the assumption that my own time is free... and in a sense it is, because I get pleasure from doing that kind of work.
-Dave