POLL ADDED !!! - Holton BB-345 twin-spin (first actual picture on p.2)

[tubaing]

Fair enough.

I wish they were both done, along with the rest of the school repairs and the pair of 184s.
I can do some beautiful lacquer jobs on trumpets and trombones, but tubas really need epoxy lacquer and more of a lacquer booth.
I lacquered that shorty Miraphone (sort of) “frankentuba” (recording bell flair) that I sold to a local school, but there were probably a couple of minor runs in it, and probably due to me trying to put a ton of nitrocellulose lacquer on it - so it would hold up.
I just don’t have some gigantic HVAC system (again: nor much of a booth) to drop air moisture level down low enough to use no drying retarder, and drying retarder (which prevents blushing, due to humidity) encourages runs, dust, and bugs.
Finally, though blessed with better health than many my age, I’m about to turn 65, and really don’t savor the prospect of holding up a 20 pound tuba body for an hour or two (and having to completely prevent it from touching any part of my clothing or body) in front of a buffing machine. Again, with the exhaust going in the buffing room, there really is no such thing as air conditioning, so - within a few minutes - I’m dropping salty sweat droplets on freshly-polished surfaces.
...It would help, if someone would mow, spray weeds, and spray to kill these armyworms (as malathion and I don’t seem to get along too well), but I doubt that there will be any volunteers…and that stuff all takes time away from work.

[tubaing]

I must add my apologies for any above comments that sounded impatient or disrespectful. I'm truly grateful to have an artist/craftsman like Joe on the job.

[bloke]

Not at all… I just wish I could do more than I can do.
EDIT: 30 years ago, I could do a lot more work than I can now, but it wasn’t quite as good – neither the repair work, nor at the tuba playing.
That having been said, I’m actually considerably faster at repairing instruments than I was 30 years ago, but can’t do it for as many sustained hours - day after day.

[tubaing]

Anything to report?

[bloke]

As of Monday, I believe all of the band directors (for the moment) will be off my back (as the last toe-stub - one of two HORRIBLY-smashed YBB-321 tubas - will be completed...and the second one can wait), and I'll be stripping the lacquer from your valveset, aligning it, and discarding the 20J-style and crazy-long braces.

By mid-week, I'll need to be ordering some blast media (after consulting with the guy at Anderson), as well as trying to lock in a set of dates.

Later this morning, the last huge "gob" of repairs (for three Mississippi schools) will be dropped off at a multi-directors-and-me rendezvous point in Mississippi (a motel parking lot roughly equa-distant from their three schools).

There do remain TWO customer repairs, but I told one that theirs would be a LONG time - because it would have to be AFTER yours, and another customer's - well... - I'm not exactly sure what the hell they want me to do to their King 3B (??)

[bloke]

This was the last thing BEFORE getting back to the pair of Holton tubas.

a VERY extensive, but VERY "just good enough" sorta-complete job on an ancient middle-school-owned YBB-321.

Per typical, the entire thing was smushed, and everything was jacked...
It would be dumb (both financially and practically speaking) to raise the cosmetics anywhere above this, because they're just going to start their crap all over again...

[tubadude]

Yamie look nice. Waiting patiently.

[bloke]

Tomorrow, I'm going to see about stripping the lacquer off the Holton 345 valveset(s), and start aligning their tubes, smoothing out their knuckles, crooks, and bows.

I had better take a peek at my long-dormant elephantine sandblasting cabinet, too.

[bloke]

' lots of phone bidnuss and paperwork, today, but I DID get to strip the lacquer off of the CUSTOMER Holton 345 valveset and chemically clean it.

The picture (bad lighting - it's 7:40 P.M., now) shows the valveset to be in pretty good shape, but alignment is atrocious, and there are dented tubing knuckles, dented slide tubes, dented slide bows, and (as shown earlier) one replaced slide bow (crack was repairable, but the cracked slide bow just happened to be identical to one of the Miraphone slide bows for one of their instruments, so I bought a new one from them).

At least, though, it's READY for me to do "whatever" to it, because burning old lacquer (HAD I begun working on this WITHOUT first stripping off the lacquer) means that it will NO LONGER chemically strip...so I didn't want to un-solder NOR re-soldering anything on this prior to stripping off all the lacquer.

I have NOT stripped the slides themselves...I'll do that tomorrow, whilst going to town with the calipers on the "frame" (shown below).

The idea is NOT to take apart EVERYTHING and put it all back together "right".
The goal is to take apart AS LITTLE AS REQUIRED, to make it "right".

Whatever needs to be done, it needs to be done in the LEAST INVASIVE way possible (so as to have little-to-no effect on other segments of the valveset, so a lot of on-the-fly thinking - regarding various tacks to address various flaws (once problems have been identified and analyzed) - will be occurring.

To be even more clear: SUPERB RESULTS are the goal, and NOT "following some pre-dictated and drawn-out set of procedures"...
...ie. marvelous results resulting from as little toiling as possible - via continual "what's the least that can be done to make this as good as it can possibly be?" thinking and doing. That having been said, not hesitating to do absolutely as much as is required for those results.

What canNOT be seen in this straight-on picture are a set of (in my opinion...and surely would have been in the opinion of Holton factory model 345 assemblers) absurdly-long braces, which extend back to the body. (Could this tuba fit into ANY bag or case, with the valveset hanging off the front if this instrument that far...??) so - besides INTERNAL alignment - another goal is VALVESET-TO-BODY alignment. I'm not necessarily going to attempt to "nestle" this valveset down into the bows as deeply as possible, but (well...) just put the thing together as a " bone stock" 345 SHOULD be put together.

I'm not a "re-manufacturer". Rather, I'm a "put-it-back-as-much-like-it-was-er".
If (??) I can manage to slick it out so as many have no idea that something was ever distressed (yet WITHOUT pulling out the dreaded file and the dreaded belt sander), well... That's the ultimate goal, isn't it?

@the elephant Wade seems (??) to be interested in this, so I just tagged him. (I'm not really sure why, because he's as good at this stuff as anyone...??)

[tubaing]

SUPERB RESULTS are the goal...

...marvelous results

"...to make this as good as it can possibly be"

Getting me excited, Joe.

[bloke]

Today, hours (eek!) are being spent on the upper #4 slide.
The upper #4 crook (odd width/odd bore/not easily replaced) was pounded out - obviously - by someone's (dude in the back of a combo store...??) wooden or steel tool, sported a concave inside curve, and was more than 1/10" out-of-round (as well as 1/10" narrower than the defined outside slide spacing (which isn't even, in the first place).

Further, the crook has hairline cracks, so fun-fun-fun !!!

I'm taking a "cool-down" break...It's tedious and patience-taxing.

[bloke]

I've made a great deal of progress on the CUSTOMER Holton 345 valveset, though there's considerably more to do.
(All water keys will be done LAST.)
I probably will work on it a little bit more today, but will turn off the shop lights when it's time for Svengoolie.
tonight: ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN
...While others of you are sucked in to network crap, partisan "news" crap, reality crap, other cable crap, net-f_ _ks, or other "smart" TV crap, I'm laughing my @$$ off - watching quality programming with 4" rabbit ears via a broadcast tower that's 50 miles away, plugged in to NUTHIN'.


As can be seen, OVERALL, it's beginning to more like a PERSONALLY-owned valveset, and LESS like a school-owned/FUBAR valveset.
Note that the (most tedious) #4 circuit is DONE WITH it's tubing dents removed, tubes aligned, and BOTH upper and lower slides fitted:



Here's the LOWER #4 slide with a new bow, which (serendipidously) is the same (not even any "justifying" required) as a standard Miraphone bow - and yeah...There were a bunch of dents in those slide tubes and elbows:



The UPPER #4 slide bow (nothing like it available to buy - ready-made - to replace it) was very-VERY FUBAR, because the factory alignment (PLUS subsequent tubing damage) was SO bad that someone had POUNDED it out of there and concaved the underside ("armpit") of the slide bow, and that took a LOT of time to repair.
Also, note the double-full-size-flange brace (towards the bottom of this picture). There are TWO identical pair of these, and the LOWER pair (out of the picture, featured (factory sloppiness) a connecting cylindrical rod (inside) that was about 4/100" too long, so that sloppiness contributed to Wisconsin-manufactured FUBAR.



Additionally, the upper #4 slide bow featured spider cracks, so I brazed over them (inside a little and outside a lot).
I'll file away as much of this as I can - later.



The thumb ring was badly mangled, but I managed to repair it without removing it.
Yes...That's a dent in the elbow heading into the #1 casing...There are a few not-yet-repaired dents remaining in other similar elbows.
I'm going to remove them with a solder/inertia tool, because it's the safest and least invasive way to remove them.
I was actually able to remove quite a few of those with balls/magnets.



This was probably the absolute worst Holton factory sin:
The large loop in the #4 circuit was bent properly on the bench, but was soldered in place something between 5/16" and 3/8" off (where it solders to the #1 outside slide. MAN !...Did that throw off EVERYTHING on the upper AND lower #4 slides.



What you're looking at here is one of the main slide's outside slide tubes (mounted).
The client has reported that the instrument (besides featuring a VERY short main slide) is also sharp-natured...
...so I managed to scrounge (luckily, just about perfectly-matched sizes in my blokestuff) inside/outside tubing to lengthen both sides of this slide. I'll probably deal with that nearly last - just before sticking on the water keys:



I'm not sure how I'll proceed with the mounting job. The original mouthpipe WILL be kept, so that will obviously factor in to the procedure.

That's all's I got's...for now.

[bloke]

ALL of the slides are fitted (except main), and all that remains are removing a few "tinks" from the elbows (extending from the casings) and mounting water keys.

After that, I guess I'll solder the body together, clean up the joints, and see how to fit this valve set and mouthpipe on to it.

...If I don't have any luck, I can always send it back to the factory. Holton is built by Conn-Selmer...correct...??

[bloke]

rounding towards the valveset finish line, but I have to go to the symphony office (over yonder) for my official ok-to-play cooties-in-my-boogers-test - and show up before 5:00 P.M...
(' anyone want to comps to hear - a clean-boogers version of Brahms II and Mendelssohn Vln...??)

...so I will probably work for another hour, get cleaned up, and go.

The instrument's owner pointed out to me that the MAIN slide's inside slide tubes are crazy short (compared to outside slide capacity), so I found some (different size, each side) compatible tubing for BOTH sides (in the bloke-junk) and will leave BOTH sides LONG - until a post-assembly/pre-finish-work play-test. (I suspect that someone in the past - not understanding what they were doing - cut the INSIDE tubes (not understanding that the OUTSIDE tubes would also need to be cut) because some eighth-grade kid was playing this thing "flat". It also appears (after disassembly) that the ends of the main slide bow were cut (though I HAVE seen factory Holton cuts that looked this bad), but I'd prefer to not fab' a new one (nor install new outside slide tubes), as the instrument's owner reports that - previously - "most of the way out" offers(ed) A=440 for them...so (in the future) they're have an approx. 1-1/4" (x both sides) extra pull.

After the valveset is mounted on the instrument, I'll be lapping out the final imperfections (inside/outside slide tubes are NICELY aligned, but several of them were dented - from school use) from the slide tubes (possibly even carefully sanding down a few inside tubing high spots, if called for).

The main and 4th slides need new water keys, and the owner has requested (as seen on my personal instruments) water keys on each of the 90-degree lower elbows (which exist valve casings #'s 3 and #4 (which saves dumping the upper #'s 3 and #4 slides).

Mrs. bloke will assist in the assembly. I hope I have enough spare/scrounged/donated Holton brace socket-flanges, because I do not like making them on the lathe...It just wish to HAVE them and to INSTALL them...I don't wish to have to MAKE them.

I have (not Memphis, but Jackson, TN) a Halloween pops NEXT week...
It might be fun to play-test this huge mama in a rehearsal, but my PLAN (for that CONCERT) is to use
- the COMPACT (32" tall) Holton BB-flat that I built (most of the tunes)
- Yamaha YEP-321 (euphonium) for "Mars" (Planets)
- Willson 2900 (comp euphonium) for Berlioz - "March to the Scaffold" and Gounod - "Funeral March for a Marionette" (as - in each of these - a "low C" is encountered...so I'll need the comp. (and a large mpc.) to play that pitch 1-3-4 (as the euphoniumistas all know)

The valve section (compared to the previous picture) now has a lot of red, green, and grey on it.

The instrument's owner should smile when they see this main slide, with replacement inside tubes on both sides - BOTH of which are extra-long, with ample extra length to cut off.

[tubaing]

NEXT week...
It might be fun to play-test this huge mama in a rehearsal, but my PLAN (for that CONCERT) is to use
- the COMPACT (32" tall) Holton BB-flat that I built

So eager to hear the report when it is put back together if the intonation tendencies remain. Thanks for the updates :)

[Three Valves]

I probably will work on it a little bit more today, but will turn off the shop lights when it's time for Svengoolie.
tonight: ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN
...While others of you are sucked in to network crap, partisan "news" crap, reality crap, other cable crap, net-f_ _ks, or other "smart" TV crap, I'm laughing my @$$ off - watching quality programming with 4" rabbit ears via a broadcast tower that's 50 miles away, plugged in to NUTHIN'.

Chick, CHICK!! Where's Chick??

[bloke]

3-1/2 hours between rehearsals, YET 1-3/4 hours r/t drive time, were I to go home and try to get something done… Phooey !!!

bloke “the drawbacks of living somewhere relatively safe”

[bloke]

Today was yet another 'chase-my-tail' day.
I have a dress rehearsal tonight, and an infection (toothache) has reemerged...so it's obviously a bad tooth (ie. root canal needed), rather than just a sinus infection.

The antibiot' got phoned in to our virtually-no-murders-county Walmart, I discovered (after delivering crap to a band director near a daily-killings-county Walmart) that ours was out of those pills, so I had to BACK-TRACK to the daily-killings-county Walmart (that I had passed 30 minutes earlier) to get the pills there. They were CLOSED for lunch (30 minutes) but the other pharmacist had called them, so they ACTUALLY came out from hiding (JUST FOR ME !!!) and sold me the pills !!!

I NEED to have those pills, though, because this toothache needs to subside before tomorrow night's concert, and I need to keep the pain in check through NEXT week's (Halloween pops) concert, after which (??) I might let the mad scientist drill the nerve out of my tooth.

This week's concert is important (Brahms II & a GOOD !?!?! new composition, and one of them no-tuba thangs: Sibelius fiddle-tune), but next week is wall-to-wall / full-tilt-boogie greatest "scary" hits...tubatubatubatubatubatuba (and actually: euphoniumeuphoniumeuphonium - one "tenor tuba" and two "ophicleide" parts)...

...and then (a few days later) some Oktoberfest-y stuff, and then Mendelssohn...and on-and-on...

...NONE of which goes well with a friggin' TOOTHACHE.

I have ONE hour to spend on the Holton 345 (before shower and heading to the dress), and it's going to GET that hour of my efforts.

[Three Valves]

@bloke I had a antibiotic injection lately and cleared things up. How long it lasts??

And Anbesol, lots and lots of Anbesol!!

[bloke]

Doctors seem to prefer to try to avoid those, because they are the last resort, and – if they don’t work – then what?

@bloke I had a antibiotic injection lately and cleared things up. How long it lasts??

And Anbesol, lots and lots of Anbesol!!