My bought-new 46-year-old F tuba could use a "technical review". I hope I can find the time to do one.
For now, I have a masterworks thingie (difficult piece - two tubas) in less that three weeks.
Now that (I believe) I can play the piece (the second tuba player surely being a better musician than myself - as I made sure that someone really strong was hired to cover the part), I spent just a little bit of time (and without taking the instrument apart) removing some embarrassing nicks and bumps from this old bloke-worn instrument. (ie: "If we're not good, we can - at least - try to look good"...etc.)
Being an early 80's instrument, the bottom bow features a rib - rather than a 1970's keel. The small-side bottom bow rib tip had been mashed in a bit for quite a while...I just discovered that (without removing the bottom bow) the inside diameter right underneath that tip is 2-1/2 inches...and (guess what?) I have a 2-1/2" round steel ball...so that damage is now undone.
The uglier surface is the (delicate handmade paper-thin) nickel cap on the upper bow, which had a few embarrassing nicks in it.
Being really thin, rolling a lubricated oblong dent ball through there (with 2-inches of magnets on the outside) would have resulted in some pretty ugly solder "print-through"...so I heated the cap and burnished large areas of it (with the solder underneath the cap molden, during the burnishing). This resulted in simultaneously ironing the nickel cap, the upper bow underneath it, and pushing out excess (factory) solder - which I flicked away.
It looks pretty good, and the tiny remaining flaws can be addressed later (again, during a "technical review").
This is with no files/sandpaper/buffing...' just the fire/burnishing thing:
(' sorry about the bad lighting - resulting in a grainy pic...It's COLD outside, today.)
