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

[bloke]

Today was look-through-all-the-crap-we-collected-yesterday-write-up-formal-quotes-and-submit-them day.

Today was also there's-absolutely-nothing-wrong-with-this-double-horn-you-had-me-pick-up day, to which the response was it's-blah-blah-band-director's-son's-horn-so-I-trusted-that-they-knew-what-they-were-talking-about day.

Today was also look-at-all-movements-to-the-video-game-music-orchestra-concert-coming-up-out-of-town-in-two-days-see-that-it's-dreadfully-rudimentary/repetitive-and-realize-that-I-could-have-simply-read-the-show day.

Today was also the-behemoth-dog-broke-the-120-feet-long-3/16-inch-diameter-braded-cable-again day (good dog and good guard dog for the pasture animals, but Pyrenees freak out, dig under fences, and take off whenever there's thunder...and we just can't look for him two or three weeks at a time over-and-over).

Today was also Mrs.-bloke-made-me-some-as-low-carb-as-she-could-manage-Texas-style-(no-beans)-homemade-chili-on-top-of-a-bed-of-our-garden-grown-spaghetti-squash day.

Today was NOT finish-the-Holton-345-valveset day.

Right now (c. 8:30 - defacto C.D.T. 9:30) is crawl-into-bed night.

[MiBrassFS]

Slacker…

[bloke]

absolutely fascinating (not! ) stuff today.
(This stuff is tedious drudgery, but - if some of y'all like lookin', I'll keep snappin' and typin'. )

...The #1 slide glides "nicely enough" with no "lapping"), as it's properly aligned.

I shy away from super-slick fits when I'm fixing up something to sell, because some potential buyers might just like to hold a tuba, blow into it, and enjoy themselves. Further, they might not appreciate having to take care to avoid upper slides falling on the floor (when the tuba rests on its bell).
Finally, someone else - if they decide to do something later - can slick the slides (since they'll already be properly aligned), and - hopefully - without using very much sandpaper and mostly via some sort of lapping compound and lubricant.

[York-aholic]

Should you need a Holton 340/5 brace Mr. Bloke, give me a yell. I have one or two 340 valve sets with some of the short tubes still on that have small braces.

[bloke]

You are always so generous!

I think I have a pretty good little collection of Holton socket flanges, but the solid fixed-spacing shorty braces get used up on repairs for customers and building things such as the little Holton BB-flat instrument that I built a couple of years ago and so on.
Dan - out west - likes to make these. I will make things when I have to, but I'd much rather have them than make them. I also save broken ones, because it's also easier to grind a broken flange off of the lathe-fabricated part and braze it to a new flange than make one from scratch.

[bloke]

I have the slides done for circuits one, two, and three. Guess what? The second slide bow was not spaced properly for the outside tubes. That's a rare occurrence - in my experience, but now it's geometrically lined up with the outside slide tubing spacing, and it slides very nicely.

The factory did a poor job of building the larger bore fourth circuit inside slide tubing. I did a whole bunch of work on the upper #4 pair of inside slide tubes and they work nicely, I managed to get the longer of the lower pair of inside tubes working okay, but the short one on the lower slide is still a mess.

(Thank goodness I'm old, experienced, and am very fast at removing dents from slide bows. Otherwise this crap would have taken a ridiculously long amount of time.)

The short lower #4 inside tube is so crappy, that I'm thinking of taking a King outside slide tube (for King's .750" bore inside slide tube) and turning it down on the lathe to the correct diameter, since it's close. I haven't bothered looking through my nickel tubing, because I'm not going to put one stray piece of nickel tubing on this brass valve section.

[York-aholic]

I have the slides done for circuits one, two, and three. Guess what? The second slide bow was not spaced properly for the outside tubes. That's a rare occurrence - in my experience, but now it's geometrically lined up with the outside slide tubing spacing, and it slides very nicely.

The factory did a poor job of building the larger bore fourth circuit inside slide tubing. I did a whole bunch of work on the upper #4 pair of inside slide tubes and they work nicely, I managed to get the longer of the lower pair of inside tubes working okay, but the short one on the lower slide is still a mess.

(Thank goodness I'm old, experienced, and am very fast at removing dents from slide bows. Otherwise this crap would have taken a ridiculously long amount of time.)

The short lower #4 inside tube is so crappy, that I'm thinking of taking a King outside slide tube (for King's .750" bore inside slide tube) and turning it down on the lathe to the correct diameter, since it's close. I haven't bothered looking through my nickel tubing, because I'm not going to put one stray piece of nickel tubing on this brass valve section.

How long of a piece do you need? I’ll look to see what I have in the morning before heading off to work.

[York-aholic]

Nevermind, offer rescinded. I only have tubing from a 340, ie none of the larger 345 4th valve tubing.

[bloke]

I'll manage. Thanks so much.
I'm not much into seaming sheet metal and fabricating tubing from scratch, but I'm pretty darn good at finding things that are close and altering them into things that are just so.

[bloke]

tah-dahhh !!!

(Water keys will be those European-made brass ones which are made by the same place that makes the Buffet nickel-brass ones.)

LARGER #4 INSIDE SLIDE TUBING UPDATE/RESULTS:
One of the uppers was cracked (I silver-brazed it), the longer lower one was oval (I had to squeeze it in the vice with a piece of wood ), and the short lower one was BOTH oval AND the seam was cracked and sunken (nearly end-to-end)...
ACTUALLY, the Holton tubing is so thinwalled that the oval tubes would slide in to the outside tubes, BUT [1] that's crappy and [2] I sorta needed to round the oval tube so that I would have a FINAL O.D. to achieve with the short-side tube (vs. "ok...It seems to fit 'purdy good' ").

...so what you're seeing (short lower #4 is a King OUTSIDE slide tube - which fits over King's .750" bore inside slide tube).
It's the same bore as the Holton. I took it's outside dimension down several thousandths (to .845", I'm thinkin') to fit in the/this #4 Holton outside slide tubing.
I futzed around centering that tube on the lathe for so long (to eliminate runout) that I should have just used a coarse file, a fine file, coarse sandpaper, fine sandpaper, and buffing. (It would have been just as good.)

Anyway, this valveset is just about ready to mount on the inner bows...
(This one was more challenging than most...Of course, previous "banked" attic Holton BB345's were EASIER and (duh ) I fixed them up FIRST.

hmm...I wonder if I might have this stuck together by St. Andrew's Day...(??)

[arpthark]

re: silver brazing cracked tuning slide bows...

Do you grind the crack out, first? What's your method? How do you ensure the inside of the tube doesn't have any residual brazing material protruding into the airway?

[bloke]

re: silver brazing cracked tuning slide bows...

Do you grind the crack out, first? What's your method? How do you ensure the inside of the tube doesn't have any residual brazing material protruding into the airway?

- smooth out the bow
- dab paste flux into the crack
- hit it with the tip of a hot-ass flame
- fill the crack quickly
- file off the excess
- avoid filing away the adjacent brass

Others probably have better ways of doing this.

[bloke]

I haven't made any additional progress on 345 #2, as someone tossed 345 #3 at me...

They're sticking it all back together. They just wanted me to slick out all the parts for them.

I charge reasonable dough to do this stuff. "Blueprinting" a carelessly-built 4-valve valve section...That's a little bit more pricey.

These belong to SOMEONE'S ELSE BB-345 ie. TRIPLE-SPIN:

[bloke]

OK...
Back to MY OWN ACTUAL Holton BB-345 #2 from the ORIGINAL "twin-spin"...
...NOT someone's else Holton project's parts.

This valveset was quite difficult to mount on these bows, BECAUSE the original Holton factory mounting job counted on DEEPLY MASHING IN places in the dogleg (just past the main slide) for a BARELY FUNCTIONAL main slide (ie. one that "rings" like a $1000 5/4 Asian tuba, when you pull it completely off the instrument quickly).

I had to do some pretty remarkable things to get the outside slide tubes parallel and coplanar...and I could NOT use the main slide as an alignment jig (too much torque to do that, but ALSO) because the main slide bow's span is going to need to be widened (and then re-rounded) to line up with the (never before) NOW parallel/coplanar outside slide tubes.

The dogleg also had to sort of lay slightly zigzageddy across the small upper bow just below it...
...so this mount won't be quite as elegant as @tubaing's managed to be, and probably not as "sunken" into the instrument...but whatever. It is what it is. Hey...but - besides getting those two tubes parallel/coplanar to each OTHER, I ALSO managed to get them parallel/coplanar to the slide circuit tubes in the rest of the valve section.

EVERY DAMN ONE of these big-ol'-elefunt-tubas was different (as those of us who've worked on them have been taught via experience).

Seriously...solving the "How the HELL am I going to get those slide tubes lined up, based on the way they bent these parts?" puzzle presented the ol' bloke with a pretty good challenge.

Were I REALLY determined, I could be tootin' on this thing by tomorrow night...but I ain't gettin' sucked into that...I'm buffing all the solder joints before mounting the two big bows, bell, and mouthpipe tube.

[York-aholic]

Looking good. My shipping address is PO Box .............

[bloke]

OK...I'm sorta proud of this main tuning slide bow.

As shown, I had to widen this bow quite a bit (at least 4mm, or perhaps a bit more).

The main slide is the "hinge point" on a Holton 345 when mounting the valveset to the inner bows.

Again (previously stated), the main slide cannot be used as any sort of alignment jig because of the weight of the valve section (which would easily overcome any precise alignment of the removable slide).

I had to (while the massive valve section was "flopping" around) eyeball coplanar and "deal with" parallel.

AFTER the valve section was mounted, I had to (then... ) "work" the main tuning slide bow (epic) to fit the instrument.

The reason the fit was so poor is because - when this instrument was originally assembled at the plant - some "factory technician" MASHED deep dents into the dogleg so that the main slide could (barely) work well enough to slide. For me to assemble all of these bows - WITHOUT doing that they did, I had to think about stuff....A LOT...and then (yeah, even harder - because I'm not a particularly good thinker) I had to DO stuff (OK...I might ?? be a little bit better DOer than I am a thinker).

[York-aholic]

Yep. Tuning slides, when pulled, should be tuning slides rather than tuning forks!

Thank you, that made me smile.

[bloke]

A school system had a major major plumbing issue, and had to put a hold on all purchase orders, so the band director begged me to go out and see if one of the four tubas they handed to me could be made to play. I found one that I could make toot (even though it's all beat up and the slides are all out of alignment and the valves are all coated with lime), should get them down the road for a bit as a freebie...

But I picked up the Holton and swapped out one brace (that I had to change, due to the epic stuff I did yesterday), and picked over some other stuff. I ended up staying out there for an hour (or was it two?). I'm glad I left the heat on before dinner.

I'm going to see about blowing FatBastard for a while and the cimbasso. Both of them are going to get some heavy use this coming weekend.

[bloke]

Due to the way that the bows were made at the factory - particularly the inner bows - this is the best I could manage to get this thing put together...
...that is: with all of the slides parallel and coplanar. It's definitely a compromise, as far as the way it looks to the eye, but - otherwise - not.

The mouthpipe is still beat up/not repaired, but - once repaired - it looks as if it will lay onto the instrument.

I'd like to find an even-skinnier bell-to-bow brace...I'm still looking through boxes.

Everything is only tacked, but I doubt that I'll be un-tacking anything.

Other than completing the tacked joints, there is a lower bell to bottom bow brace to be installed, two #3 to upper bow brace assemblies, and a low bow to bottom bow brace...and the mouthpipe repair/installation...

...I wonder how it toots...(??)

[Sousaswag]

That looks great. There are things about both of my Holtons that bother me, as I’m sure they would you and Wade, but through reading all of this thread and all of Wade’s a bunch of times, it bothers me less since ALL of them look “weird” in some way.

I’m always impressed by your work, especially on these weird a$$ Holtons. Great job