The Great Kurath Re-Tubing

[bloke]

Before a welding shop guy replaced his perfectly-good DeVilbiss B.A.C. with a new no-name (and sold me the nice/shiny/used DeVilbiss bohemith) I used a 110V compressor - just as you describe - and shot countless instruments with it. As long as it doesn't pop a low-amperage breaker - in the middle of a job - you should be fine.

I've never tried one of these gravity-feed shooters (linked below), but the cost of this one (no...not DeVilbiss nor Binks...but I also shot a bunch of horns with the - late 1970's SEARS - "good" - meaning craptastic-est - paint gun) is only the cost of "skip-one-post-rehearsal-bull-session-at-Chili's"...

EDIT: idea...If you could scare up enough to buy THREE of them, you would have THREE cups (for thick-mix, regular-mix, and bright-coat), and also tons of spare parts (to keep one of them going for quite a few years).

https://www.amazon.com/CARTMAN-Professi ... B07D6LXN6G

bloke "attempting to be encouraging-istic"

[the elephant]

So yeah, the hell that is cutting tubing using a jeweler's saw looms large in my life right now. I had forgotten just how much I hate doing this in this manner. My Proxxon mini miter saw worked perfectly for years, but it is not true right now and I cannot figure out how to fix that. I had assumed that it was a *real* tool that could be calibrated when it went out of whack. I guess not. I will likely buy another one as I easily got my money's worth out of the thing.

I usually can do this very accurately using my Dremel, too, but for some unknown reason, I am not comfortable with doing it this way, this time. I have no idea WTF is wrong with my head in this regard. So I have spent about ten hours cutting tubing by hand, burning through about 20 tiny saw blades. They are not really intended for this sort of work. I need to buy more and to find a slightly heavier gauge that breaks less easily.

Again, 1st and 5th both are on the horn, which leaves the main slide, both 4ths, both 3rds and the 2nd slide. I am awaiting stuff from Miraphone, but I remembered that I had a stash of very straight NS tubing cutoffs in two sizes that remained from the Holton project, so I juggled them around until I came up with everything I needed in those two sizes save for one 110 mm length. This is great as it allowed me to use up most of the cutoffs so that the new tubing can remain much more usable as one long piece. (It sucks mightily when you need 110 mm and 90 mm of a specific tube and you only have in your box two pieces of 100 mm each. You have all you need, but only one piece can be made to be usable, and you have to locate another piece. It is always better to have 200 mm in one piece. Well, you get my drift.)

Here is all the tubing for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, minus five short lengths that will complete the set. Come ooooooooon, Miraphone! Ship my box already!



This took me a combined time of about 10 hours to measure, cut, dress, and lap (when needed, this was a pretty good order of tubing with very few fit issues.) It was a ridiculous amount of work and I have blisters all over my hands as a result. NEVER AGAIN! For the MTS I will just use the dank Dremel tool. I will probably cut the remaining five tubes for the 3rd circuit using the saw, but I might also set my house on fire. Who knows?

[the elephant]

The above shows 48 cuts, which take about 10 minutes each the way I do it. All the other work to get these to fit together nicely took the normal amount of time. Anyway, the actual time spent making each cut was about eight hours. The rest of the work took about two.

As I said: this sucked.

Laugh at me if you will. This is also the most accurate fit between ferrules and outer slide tubes I can get without a lathe. And I have one, but it is not yet ready for Prime Time.

[Tubajug]

My unsolicited opinion would be that with the removable valve set and that open bugle, lacquer that puppy!

[the elephant]

All feedback is appreciated and considered. And I happen to agree. So does Mrs. Elephant.

[bloke]

This information was pretty easy to obtain:

In Yazoo City, the month with the highest average level of humidity in the air is
December, with around 72% or so.
The lowest is September, with about 63% or so.

Knowing how much additional imperfections bug Wade (just as they do me), I wonder if a better spray job might possibly be obtained by playing and enjoying it for several months, and shooting it early next fall…??

As Wade has also been known to rethink things - and to go back and re-re-configure things, this will also give him time to make certain that everything he did to this instrument pleases him.

bloke “ with third person references apologies“

[the elephant]

HA! That is WAAAY off. It is normally 85% through most of the spring and then again in late summer, and again right now when it never stops raining and our Fall Colors are Dirt, Mud, and Clay.

We got to 95% many times in August a few years ago. I check it every day, and if working outside I will check it every hour to see whether I will need to quit early or can safely soldier on into the Mosquito Hour…

It is unseasonably low humidity right now, which is why I have been outdoors so much working on the yard and house - and this tuba. It is 67% at this moment, and that is down from earlier, and this is very dry for around here.

[the elephant]

Oh, and I will only be shooting the valveless bugle. I do like to tinker with things too much to lacquer the valve section for some time, like several years.

But yeah, my narrow window for lacquering here at the house has likely closed for 2021, unfortunately.

[the elephant]

I need to learn to re-chase simple engraving. Anyone? Bueller?

[the elephant]

I posted in this thread twice today and both have disappeared. Huh…

[the elephant]

I was unhappy with my 1st slide action, so today I removed it, cleaned all the parts, did some necessary trimming to the tubes, and then tried to reassemble it.

The Miraphone tubes are very thin and the parts I am soldering to them are much thicker, acting as heat sinks. I solder outdoors and it was cool today, so all this heavier gauge stuff on the eggshell-thin tubing would see me getting alignment with a perfect, two-finger pull, only to see that go completely out the window each time I added a "layer" of parts. The tubes are OVALIZING due to the higher heat I have to use in the cold, outdoors.

This was FRUSTRATING, to say the least. I am still not happy with the alignment, but I put it back on the horn all the same. I think a really good cleaning will help, but I had to quit before I shot someone. <grrrrr…>

So the 1st "cockpit" is much better than before, but I am still not happy. This is why I decided to do this slide separate from the rest of the valve section. I *knew* from the last time I worked on this tuba that this would be an issue, and with the Miraphone tubing, it is even worse!

Stepping back for the sake of sanity. I have no tail, but I seem to have been chasing one all damned day…

[the elephant]

After an evening of introspective head-scratching, I have determined the culprits in this slide alignment issue.

1. Too much heat for too long.
Working outside in the cold and wind forces me to use excessive heat. For this slide only I have received mrs. elephant's permission to solder indoors. I do this from time to time, but do not have *any* sort of ventilation, so the fumes and flux vapors do not go away. My shop is adjacent to my bedroom, and breathing lead and flux fumes for the next month is not my idea of "fun". The few times I've soldered in the laundry room/shop resulted in all my tools rusting over the next week. Anyway, moving indoors for this one complicated assembly ought to be fine. Maybe Febreeze will counteract the flux floating around in the air? HAHAHA!!!

2. Misalignment of knuckles and crook ends.
When expanding or contracting crook or knuckle ends a bit to make incompatible tubing work, sometimes the alteration happens a bit off-center, thereby changing the span by a fraction of a millimeter. I am very careful and take my time, measuring constantly, when I do this work. However, it only takes a tiny bit of an offset to FUBAR the whole thing. I now know how to fix this, but it is time-consuming tedium to do it. I am almost certain that this is one of the issues. This happened to the 2nd slide of the Holton and it took me forever to figure out and sort.

Today I will take all that mess apart again, clean up everything, and get to work making sure the crook and 1st knuckles mate up correctly. (One of the knuckles is 3 mm longer than the other, and that drives me crazy. I will level them, double-check the crook ends for the same thing, and then make sure that everything matches up.

Then I have to deal with the brace issue, and that will require very low heat and a lot of control, so at that point, I will start to pollute the air of my shop with lead and flux. We'll see where that goes. I may not post anything for a few days until I have this solved. I am stubborn, so I will probably get things where I want them. Until then I will likely be spewing a non-stop stream of invective and cuss words.

Adios.

[bloke]

Does your attic sport…
- permanent stairs?
- possibly an old brick chimney - for the house’s original or existing heating system - with maybe an unused round flue hole in the chimney bricks in the attic, whereby you could plug-in some 6” flu pipe, and a 110V E-flat-size exhaust fan?
(It might not be “code”, but probably would be “good“.)

I believe your diagnosis of your struggles is on the money. About the only solder- or torch-related stuff that I do outdoors is non-critical - to take things apart, or to empty pitch, lead, or cerrobend out of successfully-bent mouthpipe tubes.

I just touched up a really cool dark original lacquer Olds “Super” trombone to sell to a friend. The slide felt very good, but measured 10/1000ths off - from end to end. A full take-apart was not called for, but some very delicate heating, very delicate tapping, and very delicate tugging - here and there - absolutely was is called for (to hopefully circumvent some future “hey bloke“ email about “the slide action“). … I just couldn’t imagine having been able to do that stuff outdoors in the windy 40° weather.

[the elephant]

The attic stairs are very sketchy. I will be rebuilding them to de-sketch them some, but I have to do it so that it looks like original work from 1937, or it won't be grandfathered in. That will require me to get a permit, and my plan will NOT pass the local code at all as the risers will be one inch too tall. However, by increasing the height of each stair a bit I can fully remove the diagonal steps that turn to ascend to the right. If I can remove just two of them I can replace them with a square "landing" where you can SAFELY make the 90º turn to the right. Once that is done I plan to move part of my shop up there permanently, with ventilation and fire protection measures and all that crap. I might even try to add a large dormer to expand the usable space, but I would have to sister in extra floor joists/rafters to take the weight. Oh my God, if I ever get all this done I'll be too old to use it.

The brick chimney only involves the downstairs wall. The edge of the roof meets it, so there is no brickwork in the attic at all. I also have some rather epic roof leaks right now and can see outside in four places, unfortunately.

So for now my attic is just my dream shop and not really usable. Stairs first, roof when I can afford it. (Ours is asbestos shingles, so the government dictates that I spend about ten grand on asbestos abatement before the five grand on a cheap, tin roof. Un-F-ing-believeable…

[bloke]

(not meant to be political - nor a real suggestion, but just sarcasm)

Since we are being blessed suddenly with even millions more “undocumented workers“, couldn’t a few of them remove some “undocumented asbestos shingles“ and place them in some “undocumented swamp“?
——-
I hope you eventually get your set up.

There is some amazing old tan colored stuff that is actually designed to caulk log houses between round logs that completely touch, and around windows (as the amount that log houses expand and contract is absurdly huge)…I believe Sikaflex makes it. The sun can bake it, it stays flexible for decades, and never loses adhesion. I wonder if someone could buy a few tubes of that stuff, climb up there for you, and at least plug those leaks? (Possibly - to make it even more sun-resistant, they could sprinkle sand over it - while it is still sticky…??)

EDIT: I BELIEVE that it is THIS product, Wade:
Sikaflex-219 LM

I'm seeing it for c. $9/tube.
I DO NOT KNOW (??) if it would semi-permanently seal those roof leaks (and buy you more time / minimizing additional decking water damage), but it has held and is still flexible - on this house, everywhere it has been applied for nearly fifteen years, and many of those surfaces are not treated "nicely" by neither the sun nor by precipitation.

IF it works for this non-intended application, I wonder (??) if you could install it from inside the attic (using the sunlight, to show where it is needed)...

[the elephant]

I'm on it. Thanks!

Sikaflex-219 LM

[bloke]

Good luck...
I wish I had not thrown away my last empty tube, so I could tell you for certain that it is, but I am as certain as I can be.

I believe - when I converted a porch to a room, and drove all the way up there to buy logs - the last place that I bought any of that stuff was Timberhaven ...w-a-y up in northern PA. (855) 306-5678

Call them, and ask if I remembered the correct product...to insure that I don't mislead you...and (again) it is NOT a roof leak product...but all of the "best" roof leak products (at least, in my experience) last between "months" and "a year"...They just aren't sticky enough, tretchy enough, or sun-resistant enough.

for later, if there's dough to do this IN ADDITION to a nice new metal roof:
There's also a tough asphalt roof product (not elegant, and many use it as a Herculean substitute for tar-paper under-layment) that is 3'-wide roll roofing that has a SUPER-adhesive (peel-and-stick) back. It's SO good that (even if a asphalt/cedar/metal roof fails, the water will run down under the failed roof, and on top of this stuff. Bit-by-bit, I'm having my standing-seam metal roof pulled back, this stuff put down, and - then - the metal roof slid back into place. This place (arguably, a white elephant...just like the outline of your picture) expands and contracts SO much that it's the ONLY thing that ABSOLUTELY has stopped leaks down in this roof's valleys. ...so it does NOT need to be installed everywhere (ie. not underneath the entire roof)...but ONLY where leaks are prone to occur.

[the elephant]

I spent all morning on the 1st slide without the torch. Magically, overnight the issue with the alignment mostly went away. I spent a lot of time double-checking the inner tube ends for super-tiny burrs. I found some, too. Once that was taken care of, a little more lapping was done to the tubes for the first two inches only, and then I cleaned the snot out of the valve section. I mean I spend like two hours cleaning this stuff out, and as always with the Ferree's stuff, there is *still* a minute amount of it at the joint between the outer tubes and the knuckles.

Ugh…

I switched back to a different lube for this slide that I used for many years and that I happen to have a bottle of at hand. Marvel Mystery Oil usually imparts the exact feel to the pull that I want. It is just the right viscosity for my preferences. I love the stuff. But idiot that I am, I had to try out the Hetman's stuff and then forgot about it. I finally dumped all my Hetman's goo out in the weeds, washed out the bottles, and now use them for lamp oil and MMO.

The action is not what I want, but it is improved over what I had with this tuba for years. It is much better. I will sort the 1st slide sometime in the future. I need to get on with this project so I can move on to the next one.

Sorted!

[the elephant]

I fully tore down the 1st slide, cleaned up all the parts, and very slowly reassembled it in a very different order. I think I will keep it this way, so Friday I will start cleaning it all up. The outside temp was higher, humidity about the same, and the wind much less gusty than most of this past week. The solder flowed much more consistently and my work was a lot cleaner, like when I am indoors. I did not have to damn near anneal anything just to do basic work.

Borat told me he was impressed.

I hope everyone takes time tomorrow away from food, football, parades, or shopping, and remembers to take some time out to consider all the things in your lives for which you should be grateful. Then give thanks for it to whomever you want, in the manner in which you are most comfortable.

And for goodness sake, to you guys who fry turkeys in a big pot out back: please THAW them first! Dunking a FROZEN turkey into a pot of boiling oil is a great way to burn your dang house down!

[the elephant]

Saw blades arriving on Monday via UPS, and my Miraphone order cleared US Customs and is at the Miami USPS sort facility.

Hooray for me!