bloke wrote: ↑Sun Aug 11, 2024 4:52 pm
... it really doesn't take that much physical strength to flip a 27 lb tuba upside down, pull up on it a little bit (to control how much downward pressure there is), and run a bell flare across a roller. Those who have encountered trouble in older age doing this could possibly benefit from looking at a whole bunch of those Instagram reels that show how to stretch and straighten out the lower back and get rid of the pain from sitting too much or standing and walking with poor posture for so many years. That stuff - in addition to weight loss (eschewing sugars) and core strengthening - works.
My repairman, up until he recently passed away, was doing this at age 90, and did a damn fine job.
Wandering a bit off topic, but I had the same barber (excellent) from my mid-teen years until around ten years ago or so, which was when he had to quit - as he was basically dying slowly and he passed away another year or so later.
I believe he passed away at age 87 or so. When he was probably 85 and cutting my hair one day and he and I were chatting a little bit as we often did, he observed/pointed out to me that all of his friends were dead, because they all drank and smoked. He did not.
My repairman drank the very occasional beer, did not smoke, was very thin, but strong, exercised regularly, very very mentally sharp, and was a regular windsurfer up until last summer (age 89).
He worked with Larry Minick and would tell stories about how Larry would always be working with a cigarette in his mouth, inhaling solder fumes and smoking like a chimney. Unsurprisingly, Larry died very young of lung cancer.
I sort of doubt that there are such things as solder fumes, but they're certainly are acid flux fumes. I don't have amazing ventilation in my one-man shop, but I've got an air conditioner blowing and I certainly turn my head away when those fumes go up into the air. I'm sitting down often, and I see those little clouds go straight up and sort of hit the ceiling, which is only about seven and a half feet up. I don't know how I ended up with one, and maybe it was in an instrument case but there's a box of cheapy covid masks, and I put those on sometimes when doing that stuff. I put on a much more effective mask when I'm in the polishing room, even though there's exhaust in there.
I tend to suspect that the chain smoking was the thing, and the acid fumes may have been contributary but they're really not particularly inhalable, if you've ever experienced them.
bloke wrote: ↑Sun Aug 11, 2024 4:52 pmIf the handle is actually a help(??), the hand itself needs to be touching it at the bottom of the handle at least within an inch of the surface of the instrument.
Something else, there are a lot of shapes and overlapping appendages on tubas, and there are a lot of places that I can push a magnet that's only one or two inches thick but I could never push a magnet that's one or two inches thick plus a tall handle sticking up from it.
Agreed. The bottom inch of the handle is, except for the rare occasion, the only useful part. Doing this isn’t just easier on the instrument (reducing tipping dents), it’s easier on the user.
I have something here I put together I bet you would like. If I could figure out a way to make them economically, I would send you one.
