The Great Kurath Re-Tubing

[the elephant]

… and I just butchered a Minibal link. What a waste of $26. Sheesh. I already need to take another day away from this project.

[the elephant]

Does anyone know how to order from Schaublin, and what part number is used by makers for French Horn-sized links? (The ones used for tubas are stupid-large. One size smaller would be quite grand.)

Here is their catalog, since it seems to be scarce on this site. (Read: I have never, not once, seen it linked. I have posted Martin Seibold's Minibal catalog several times over the years, so here is this one, too. I hope it helps someone out.)

Scahublin Unibal Catalog

[bloke]

I can’t answer that question, but I’m willing to mail you a small size Minibal link - along with 2.Xmm required etc.

[the elephant]

Thanks for the offer, Joe. I may take you up on it, but not just yet. The damaged one is actually serving an unintended and unexpected purpose.

And now, on to today's abbreviated work…
____________________________________

Today was another bad day. I have not been sleeping for the last week and it is showing in my decisions and my execution. I am done for a few days until I manage to get a solid eight hours of sleep.

What I ended up putting around with was the new thumb ring bracket. It was a little south and a lot east of where it needed to be to fit my hand really well. Today I made the two parts and I came to the point where I have to remove the currently installed part to fit the flange to the valve knuckle, and then fit the bracket to the corrected shape of the flange. Once that is done I can silver solder the two together.

I am rethinking how the ring is mounted. Using the brace socket from Instrument Innovations allows for a super-clean-looking install, but it places the ring about a half-inch "proud" of the bracket from where it needs to be. I need to make a new lever, yes, but that particular dimensional aspect is not one that I wish to alter. So I am looking at threading the bracket itself and using a jam nut, as with Miraphone thumb rings. This would tuck the ring about 3/8" closer to the bracket. I also could machine down the parts I am using, but that could turn out to be pretty ugly, and I don't want to butcher the nice parts unless I *know* they will be used once altered.

Once again, the curved face took forever…


I still have to fit the shape of the flange to the curvature of the knuckle, then fit the curve of the bracket to the flange and route out a shallow channel so the flange will fit flush against the bracket, and then these two can be silver soldered together. The final step will be to do a nicer job of shaping the flange.


This is pretty much the perfect location for the ring's attachment point. The one on the horn is just a bit too smooshed of a hand position for me to use for hours at a stretch.


This is Samantha, my beloved and constant companion whenever I am outside. When I take my daily walks she trots along next to me until I leave her territory, then she scoots back to my front stoop and waits for me to return. The noise from power tools or the lawnmower does not scare her away. She just sits there and chills out while I work out back on my horns or fart around in the yard. What a great cat. I'm lucky she decided to adopt me.

[prairieboy1]

Thanks for the post and wow, that is a gorgeous cat! Samantha is a great name for her!

[bloke]

Getting that thumb ring in the right location is more important than any of the stuff that you were doing in the previous posts, so good.

i’m pretty darn sure that - the more tame an animal is - and the more “personable“ it is, the way smarter it is.

I bought a gob of two sizes of links and a couple of different types of screws to go with them back before I had to empty out my bank account to pay off one of my relatives’ medical bills, so I probably didn’t pay $27, since I bought quite a few.

20 bucks might be nice, but - if you are as short as I am - you can have one.

(yeah… I did recently buy a tuba, but I sold a bunch of other stuff out of my - personal-owned – not shop-owned - tuba room that more than covered it… and it was stuff that wasn’t making me any money.)

Speaking of money and watching it closely, has anyone been to a lower-end franchise sit-down restaurant lately, and discovered that by the time they bought the gasoline to get there and home, bought a couple of chicken salads, paid for two cups of coffee, and then paid sales tax and a decent tip, that they had surrendered $50?

bloke “your stream-of-consciousness thread subject changer. and keep sticking cat pictures in this thread and others”

[the elephant]

In my Jeep (@ 15 MPG average) a trip down to our favorite hamburger place in Pearl (50+ miles to the south/southeast) the food and gas cost us $60 right now. The food generally runs about $25; up to last year it was about $12. The gas is the rest of the price. $35 just for gas to get hamburgers. Wow.

We have not eaten out in weeks now because it costs too much. Yazoo City does not have much in the way of *safe* places to eat that cost under a hundred bucks. (We have a few local steak places where a C-note for two people is common, and the food is wonderful.) So we eat a LOT of bacon, eggs, and toast, sometimes three meals a day. It is cheap, it does not screw with my diabetes, and I love it.

I hope my wife finds a job soon. I'll just say that much. And time to steer this back to the Kurath…

I have been putting off making "Thumb Ring Bracket, Mk. II" because cutting up and shaping that quarter-inch nickel silver bar is some craptacular work. I pretty much hate it. Every time I end up injured. I am glad that this did not occur today, but I was suited up better than normal, so I got far less of the metal dust up my nose and in my eyes and mouth. The bar gets so hot that it burns my welding gauntlets and tears up my fingertips, but today I used an oil-dampened, red shop rag to hold the part while I wore my heaviest gauntlets (for MIG and flux core welding). No injuries this time. Just the hassle of being all trussed up for 90 minutes outside in the heat. I am glad it was only 85º when I was out there.

So the ugly part is done. I hope to have a nice-looking part created and cleaned up by tomorrow evening, maybe even installed.

The order of operations will be to get the thumb ring on, make a new thumb lever, then figure out how I want to reshape the two levers for 5th and 6th and do that bit. After that, I have to create connection points to the link arms. The last thing will be to extend the thumb lever/link arm up to the LH 5th lever.

That ought to just about do it. Then I have to heat and adjust a few braces and clean up all the mess I have created. After some time passes I may try to lacquer the bugle sans the valve section. I would also do the leadpipe and all the slide crooks. I doubt I would try to do the valve section with what I have to work with right now. If I buy a decent spray gun I might try that later. Much later.

The BBb-cut-to=-CC 186 needs a lot of work. I fit the funky 188 leadpipe to it to see if that would open it up a bit. (It is smaller/narrower through the inner branches than a real CC 186 so I thought that would help. It turns out to have been an interesting exercise in what not to do. I plan on fitting the N/OS 1978 leadpipe (one-piece, the receiver is just a sleeve over the brass pipe). It is the smallest leadpipe I have for a 186, and I think with the narrower profile bugle that it would turn this into a fat-sounding, fake 185, which might replace my F as my quintet tuba. But the 188 leadpipe caused me to have to screw with outer branch and bell joint angles, so it is too wide across the top bow now to fit a normal-width, "classic" 186 leadpipe. Once I am done with this Kurath I can address all that; I am excited to see how it plays with the tighter leadpipe.

Goodnight. I am exhausted from a week of near-sleeplessness. It is only 9:48 but I am turning in.

[bloke]

I hope I’m posting while you are asleep!!!

I just took a ridiculously huge dent out of a JP sousaphone at the small end of the big first branch. (I can’t help but suspect that they must’ve dropped it off the back of the bleachers or something like that.) It was too deep and severe to get out any way other than taking the whole freaking first branch and body elbow off… Of course it’s silver.
Without Mrs. bloke’s help, it would’ve been really hard.
Had this been a King (instead of a JP copy, as the King instruments are made of such thin brass), I could’ve fixed it with magnets but JP brass is much thicker.
They also tore a silver solder joint loose up at the neck receiver (as loosening the neck tension screw is way too much trouble, you know). I went for broke and insanely silver soldered it back together ON the instrument. Of course all the lead solder joints were loose, but I managed to do it without bumping anything, and everything hardened back up… That’s the kind of wild crap that I do to speed up tedious jobs.
I also discovered that what Rob Hanson told me is true about their silver plating. It is thick and tough (bolstered with antimony). I was able to clean up all of the big braces on that first branch on the buffing wheel without going through any silver.
Anyway, all of this is just to say that I’m exhausted myself, and - even though I was hoping to blast through several more of the much easier-to-repair instruments for that same school, tonight - I’m going to do them tomorrow and I’m zonking out, right now.

[Oedipoes]

In my Jeep (@ 15 MPG average) a trip down to our favorite hamburger place in Pearl (50+ miles to the south/southeast) the food and gas cost us $60 right now. The food generally runs about $25; up to last year it was about $12. The gas is the rest of the price. $35 just for gas to get hamburgers. Wow.

I hate to say your gas is still crazy cheap...
Converted to USD my gasoline costs 1.95USD/liter, which is 7.38USD/gallon.
A 100 mile trip in a 15 mpg car would cost me around 50USD

Luckily my car runs 34mpg minimum...

[bort2.0]

In my Jeep (@ 15 MPG average) a trip down to our favorite hamburger place in Pearl (50+ miles to the south/southeast) the food and gas cost us $60 right now. The food generally runs about $25; up to last year it was about $12. The gas is the rest of the price. $35 just for gas to get hamburgers. Wow.

Damn Wade! 15 mpg is crap!

Best regards,
Your friend 19 mpg
aka Okay sometimes 20+

[bloke]

I guess it’s OK to crap up this thread while he’s asleep.
Our economy is based on the free flow of oil at competitive/market prices, so right now, our economy is basically shut down, and the money that people (here) are currently spending is all Monopoly (printed / Weimar Republic) money. We are sprinting towards a crash. Of course when the United States crashes, the world will crash.
I’ve never much cared that Europeans decide to allow their rulers to tax them so high on their fuel that they pay $7 or $8 a gallon. I think figure that’s the business of Europeans.
As far as mpg – since it seems to be the sidebar, we have one that does 40+ mpg (loaned to one of my music directors - who lives in two countries), one that does about 35, and one that does about 25. That one is a manual shift Element. Mrs. bloke took the back seats out, and sort of uses that as a mini-mini work van for herself. We also have a full-size van that we use to haul around large quantities of crap, and to pull trailers. I’d be surprised if it even gets 18 miles per gallon.

If we filled that fan completely full of nickel silver slide tubing - for Wade to use on his projects - or even 55 gallon drums completely full of Minibal links and screws, there’s a button on the dashboard that says “tow/haul” which delays the shifts on the work van’s automatic transmission, so that the engine will not lug.

[LargeTuba]

I get about 13mpg in my Jeep

[the elephant]

Do you have a TJ or YJ? My TJ can get up to 14 combined, and when it does I do a little dance. My JK gets between 16 and 17 if I am mostly on US highways where the speed limit is 55. On highways and the Interstate, I get about 14 or 15.

[the elephant]

Okay, the new thumb ring bracket is made, but I have to shape the flange and clean up some excess silver solder. (I sort of under-brazed the last one, so I overdid it this time. Much stronger, but also mess to file, sand, and buff off.

It has my hand in the perfect playing position for me. I am very happy with this. I also decided to do the Miraphone jam nut thing. I am off to Ace Hardware to see if I can find something appropriate, or something that can be hacked into something that is appropriate.

Adios, y'all…

[bloke]

Thank you for bumping the thread past our late night nonsense posts.
I believe you might find a brass knurled nut off of which you can cut the smaller diameter extension to imitate the Miraphone lock nut. That having been said, you might have to order it from McMaster, if you need a metric one.
Otherwise, I suppose you could pick up one from your local hardware store with an undersized SAE thread, send a drillbit through it, and tap it to your preferred thread. The fact that it’s brass and knurled would give you a very nice head start.
(I have employed this tack in the past with success.)

nearly off topic:
The Miraphone model 98 employs some different tightening system that I’ve never seen before. I’m not sure that I understand it, but I have had apart, and fooled around with it. I was able to set and tighten it…so I suppose I understand it enough…

[the elephant]

I chose to use 1/4-28 threads. I found more of the "Bach Designed" (pfft!) 3rd slide lock nuts at Ace. They only had stainless and brass, so I chose brass. The largest of this design was only 10-32 so I drilled it out, tapped it, then cut it off in the bench motor. It looks pretty nice and it jams up very tightly, too, though I worry about the softness of those threads.

If it strips out I can easily make another one later if needed.

I seem to do better on second and third tries, anyway.

This one is a final keeper, despite the small bits of reshaping (flange edge) and cleaning off of a little excess silver solder.

Me likey.


Hmm, here's a little schmutz from the buffer in there that I need to dig out.


It started out like this…


I wanted one of these. I guess I will have to buy some in the future, but what I made turned out fine for now. I like it.

[bloke]

zakly what I did...

That rocks.

For SCHOOL-owned Miraphones (since they seem to enjoy busting off their adjustable thumb rings and tossing them in the trash) I have a bunch of these in the inch-and-a-half size ( https://www.ebay.com/itm/224189106516 ), some brass screws, and some of those same knurled nuts.

I could stock the Miraphone stuff, and charge them for them, but - while they would be sitting in a drawer, they wouldn't be making any money and - obviously - they (students/directors/whomever...??) obviously don't really give a "ship" about them, anyway.

[the elephant]

It's been a while since I made this. Time to share it again…

[the elephant]

I am not perfectly happy with this. The segment of slide crook that was cut to be the flange for this part had a very small crack in it that I did not see until AFTER it was silver soldered to the base plate. I am pissed off about all the extra work I had to do to make sure it went onto the horn nicely. And then, after all that mess with the crack and getting the part soft soldered onto the valve knuckle… it is crooked. It is crooked because of the work I had to do to correct the cracked edge that was bent up during the reshaping of the edge with the Dremel tool.

dammit-dammit-dammit-dammit-dammit-dammit-dammit-dammit-dammit-dammit…

Well, it is installed, and once the horn is more or less finished I can dig around for another crook to cut up, remove the flange and do it again. The good part is that everything else is made and fits nicely. Also, if the crack does not cause any issues I can just reshape it and wire it down more carefully when I solder it back on. It is not a disaster, by any means; it is more of an aggravation. Recognizing that it is only an aggravation does not make it any less aggravating, though.



Yes, I know this looks much better than what is on there right now, but this had been fully finished and then polished up nicely. I am only showing how far off the base the ring used to be. It was like an inch too high.


You can see how much closer to the base the ring is now, which is one of the three corrections I had to make. I like the Instrument Innovations large brace socket quite a bit, but it stuck the ring too far out into space for me to be able to use it comfortably, so it had to go. A "cool" part is no good if it doesn't work…


The joint has not been cleaned up at all, yet, and the part has not been buffed, but you can see the difference in the thumb location. This is much better.


Ahhhhhhhh, finally I will be able to play this horn without PAIN in my right thumb!

[bloke]

Have you always played open hole tuba, or did you ever play a plateau system instrument?