What the heck did the crazy bloke make THIS time...!?!?

[bloke]

SUPER-HINTS
- YEP-321
- inquisitive (yet not particularly thoughtful) young scholars

(car key and fob for size reference)

[bloke]

ok...I'm going to install it...(The dollar-bill clock's a-tickin...)

I'll check back afterward (probably with a picture or two if it installed) and see if anyone guessed its location and function.

[arpthark]

4th valve casing/port anti-boogering-up device

[the elephant]

SUPER-HINTS- YEP-321
- inquisitive young scholars

My guess is that this is a drain for tears shed because everything is so hard and unfair for them, like having to practice to be good, having to speak with adults on occasion, and, you know, stuff…

As some of those feral little humans like to say: What the heck is going on?



Skibidi toilet baby. Skibidi toilet.

[bloke]

I got it stuck on the horn but Mrs bloke had pork tenderloin ready, and I forgot to bring it in the house to take a picture.

[York-aholic]

So which knuckle got ripped clean off?

[bloke]

So which knuckle got ripped clean off?

This is the one that always gets torn up from the first casing to the mouthpipe.

I thought about spending some time straightening it out, but it's hard to reach, and brazing a crack on the bottom closed and a crack on the top closed - both of which were a half inch long - would have involved a bunch of swear words, and those words would have become really repetitive and way too loud.

I stuck a .590" football-shaped dent ball out from the inside of the casing to line up this appliance square over the hole in the casing, soldered a couple of edges, and then knocked the ball out (before it ended up becoming soldered in place), and finished up heating it until I was convinced that solder had flowed nearly all the way from the outside edges of the flange inward to the circumference of the holes, all the way around.

"film at 11:00" ?... or maybe tomorrow...

... and maybe I should have at least tried to fix the original mangled knuckle, but - well - I didn't... It just looked pretty hopeless.

I'm going to now have to carb-up, so I can fall into a stupor like sleep and not have nightmares about the toilet monster. Shame on you, Wade.

I've used this method before, and made similar appliances for King, Reynolds, and Jupiter knuckles out of the first casing that feed lower mouthpipe tubes. Usually, young scholars just tear up the sousaphone lower mouthpipes, but occasionally they manage to destroy the curved knuckle out of the casing as well.

[MiBrassFS]

Looks like one of ”Fast Eddie’s” knuckle patches.

Good job!

[bloke]

Looks like one of ”Fast Eddie’s” knuckle patches.

Good job!

Never saw those. Isn't he someone who worked for Badger?

[MiBrassFS]

Looks like one of ”Fast Eddie’s” knuckle patches.

Good job!

Never saw those. Isn't he someone who worked for Badger?

Ed Strege. He the owner of Badger State. They used to (maybe still do) sell a knuckle patch with attached flange like in your picture for use on rotary valves, especially F-attachment trombones when young scholars tear them up.

[bloke]

Yeah...I know Ed/Badger.

I've been brazing most of those (trombone rotor knuckles - destroyed via marching "horns-up" abuse), lately, and sort of "bolstering" them by floating extra brazing material over the cracked area - vs. simply brazing the crack (and - again - also sousa lower m'pipes...re: skyrocketing cost, thus no longer choosing to routinely self-stock them...OK, unless someone has some really great-pricing on some random eBay box-o-parts, etc.), and preferring to not have to wait for a shipped one to arrive). My brazed-up sousa lower mouthpipes and trombone rotor knuckles (certainly seem to) last as long as new ones...Either they tear 'em up, or they don't... ...

...but this particular thing...in a hard-to-get-to-and-not-easily-removable-from-the-rest-of-the-assembly place.

I guess it's convenient to order one/some of those badger flange-patches (as you describe), but I made the one pictured in about a half hour out of scraps, the geometry matches this particular application, and - well - I already have it here.

[MiBrassFS]

If you have what’s needed already, why not? High volume young scholar support dictates keeping more stuff on hand than junk piles can supply. Time being money, places like Badger State fill the need.

“Not my circus, not my young scholars, er, uh, monkeys.”

[the elephant]

[MiBrassFS]

Love it! I’m stealing that picture!

[bloke]

[MiBrassFS]

We respect you, Rodney! It’s darn fine work. Takes more skill than slapping on a premade piece with some soft solder.

[bloke]

I suppose I could (??) have straightened this out repaired the cracks, and floated more crap over it...but (well...) in my judgement, it would have sucked, and the valve section (or - at least - the bell) would have had to come off in order to access it...

scholastic endeavors:

[MiBrassFS]

If that knuckle looks that bad, what’s the rest of the instrument look like!?

[bloke]

If that knuckle looks that bad, what’s the rest of the instrument look like!?

It was terrible, and some of it is still somewhat terrible but it's going to play. I got all the slides aligned pretty well. Other than the third slide, and I believe I would just say that I got the third one working. It gets narrower at the top probably by a good bit.. maybe even 15/1000ths or so... but the large 90° knuckle that comes out of that casing and feeds that tube is karate chopped (folded on the underside) and patched, I just wasn't willing to dig into that...certainly not for the allotted budget.

It's a very old second generation 321 still with metal guides, but a couple of the early economizing features. It has the so-called yamalloy pistons that were covered in black, and the interior had a nice lime coating which is now gone.

I got the outside bows and even the dog leg straightened out pretty good. I would rate the lacquer at about an F+.

At the condition that it is in now, it theoretically will play for a long time, but if they play croquet and volleyball with it - as was obviously done in the past, it's headed for the scrap yard.

The way they make those now (Chinese parts...??) I think the knuckles coming out of the valve block are lead soldered in (as with King), so I think those smashed (and eaten into, over time) knuckles could be replaced, rather than patched (cutting off the originals and swelling the remaining first 3/16ths of an inch or so - converting them to soldering ferrules).. But I think that's for another time and a lot more money.

The mentality involved in repairing instruments tossed around by young scholars is sort of schizophrenic: One needs to have an attitude of doing the best one can, while realizing that the limits are time related to how much money was budgeted. At the same time some of the budgeted money is wasted on driving to pick up the instruments, driving to return the instruments, typing up a formal quote, and waiting a month to be paid. Were it that schools picked up, delivered, and brought a check when they picked them back up, they could save some money on these repairs, but I'm not going to do that stuff for nothing... (I don't mind typing up a quote... I'm a pretty fast typist.)

[bloke]

I could only find a freakin' 12C with a small shank...too little...and a bit difficult (for me) to make a euphonium "go" (and - not being a euphonium recording artiste - I'm not going for multiple takes)...but this sad-lookin' old horn seems to work as well as any of these:

The first valve stem, previously, was a Yamaha TUBA valve stem...It had enough female button threads that I was able to cut it down, and avoid replacing it. I didn't have any of these old-style Yama-buttons but I had a generic near-match appearance-wise (as well as being near-match thread-wise)...so I muscled that one (not too difficult) into the #4 stem.



https://imgur.com/a/K89Oj2k

I suppose I could clean it up a little bit, but - based on how everything else looks - I really don't see much point in it...




NEXT !!!