a Sunday in June 2021 - a day fit for Kings!

[bloke]

...a bunch of work to do…A good bit of it is waiting on parts.
A while back, I picked up four 1240 tubas two King old-style 2341 tubas.
The last two (a pair of 1240 tubas) are sold.
If I can stay on task today, hopefully I can get those last two slicked out and boxed up for shipment. (Miraculously, I have all the parts they need in stock.) They need to disappear from here, and the buyer is eager to have them.
...By the way, if anyone is going on some epic road trip past the Memphis area all the way to the west coast on I-40, I might have some gas money to offer - if they have room for two tuba bodies and two recording (yeah...not-stackable) bells.

[bloke]

Lunch break...
Both bells are done.
Both bodies are about 2/3 done.
I am selling the pair to a band for a very low price and including five hours of repairs, missing parts, packing them up, and taking them to the FedEx place...five hours for ALL of that…so these are definitely “good enough“ jobs, but are actually pretty darn good.

[York-aholic]

Lunch break...
Both bells are done.
Both bodies are about 2/3 done.
I am selling the pair to a band for a very low price and including five hours of repairs, missing parts, packing them up, and taking them to the FedEx place...five hours for ALL of that…so these are definitely “good enough“ jobs, but are actually pretty darn good.

Two recording bells and two bodies going FedEx from TN to the West Coast. I'd imagine that to be a fairly painful ($) experience, or does having an account with them make it slightly less 'exciting'?

[bloke]

I found a box that will take the two bodies and another one that will take the two bells. Both are a good bit under (magic number) 130 inches (length plus girth). I'm thinking I might actually manage to get both instruments shipped for $250 (??)
I have some cases, but they are just those crappy 1990's "box" cases (from decades later than when these two instruments were manufactured), are very worn, and the buyer is choosing to forgo the cases in favor of lower-cost shipping.

One tuba is completely ready to go, and the other one is about thirty minutes away from being done. Tuba #2 only needs the straight section (below the detachable bell) smoothed out a bit, and then (only) the solder joint from that part to the bottom bow needs to be soldered.

Including packing both of them, printing labels, and taking them around the corner to the dollar store for FedEx pick up, I’m probably about an hour and 15 minutes away from “done“.

Here's the first one...
I only had one King recording bell, BUT...
I DID have a Besson recording bell with no collar, AND (after looking around)
I found a King male collar to solder to the Besson bell.

I'm charging $XXX for each of these (not $XXXX), so no refinishing was involved, and
the quality of the dent removal was only up to my minimal "way better than one would expect from elsewhere" level.


===========================================================
The LAST THINGS that I have left - out of a batch of four 1240 and two 2341 Kings - are two 22" upright H.N. White-era bells (no cracks ).
I'm probably doing to smooth them out, shoot clear on them, and see if I can get some school (??) - local or distant - interested in buying the pair of bells (for an attractive-to-bloke price for the pair) to (so to speak) "upgrade a pair of school-owned King "recording basses" to "upright concert tubas". (band directors and their notions/beliefs/perceptions... )...and yeah...Those two King upright bells would also fit Besson recording basses, and - if slightly too long for Besson - Besson comp' B-flat tubas (from the detachable-bell era) tend to be "sharp-natured" (a good bit, actually) anyway.

I picked up the "blob" of King tubas for a good price, but (well...) it's nice to see the last of them disappear...and to know that everyone who bought them is happy with them. The MOST EFFICIENT USE of ONE of them was to donate its (heavily adulterated, once donated) valveset to my personal Holton B-flat tuba project:

[bloke]

This is the last of the "collection" of old King 1240 tubas that we had bought.
It is straightened out just as nicely as the other one, but its appearance is odd, because someone (obviously, decades ago) immersed it in a chromate brightening solution, rinsed it off, dried it off, and hit it with a coat of clear WITHOUT doing ANY polishing.
This is why - when people look at polishing jobs that I've done on instruments for resale - I wrinkle my mouth and look askance when someone asks, "...so what did you do... DIP that thing...??"
(The brown lines are where the edges of the large dents - which I removed - HAD been.)

This one features a genuine (H.N. White era: seamed, NOT soldered) King bell.
Mrs. bloke likes the sound of the Besson recording bell (on the OTHER one) better...
Whatever...

Braces, bell screw flanges, finger buttons, etc. were missing...' not worth going into all that detail...

[bloke]

TWO recording basses
TWO thousand miles
TWO hundred fifty bucks
TOtal shipping
TO the buyer's house...

not TOO much, these days.