The Great Kurath Re-Tubing

[the elephant]

I dropped off the face of the earth to the non-MSO crowd years ago, so I don't know anyone at all, anymore. But this will have to come at least a year from now, as we are currently working to keep the lights on and feed ourselves; a valve rebuild is out of the question. AFTER we are square with the world again I'll get it done. It's just a question of time…

[the elephant]

The MSO season ended just over a month ago, but I still had a lot of freelance work to do. Last night marked my last "official" gig for this season. I will get a few strays over the summer, but last night was pretty much it until September. I was glad to have been able to get this tuba back together to test it out in a group.

I have decided to try a "new" mouthpiece because it seemed to offer the best scale and low register without sacrificing the "F tuba-ness" of the horn. And oddly enough, it is my special blokepiece that I put together to use with the 2165 that bloke modified and then sold to Mike Lynch. It is my normal rim, with the Symphony "$" shank and the Grand Orchestral cup.

It works GREAT! However, the MTS has to be pushed in about a half an inch farther than with my usual mouthpiece, and the scale, while better, is… different. Like a LOT different. But it is indeed much improved. I can almost play the horn without the slide, but now have to use about four alternates. There are a few notes I have not yet figured out, but they need to be a little closer to pegging the needle for me to be happy. I am trying to compromise on my slides so that I can use only alternates since I will not have my hand available for the 1st slide as much as in the past. (Upper 5th and 6th levers: remember?)

Anyway, this mouthpiece seems to really work well on this tuba. I would have never guessed in a million years that this would be the case. I do not think I had even *tried* it with this tuba. Now I have to practice with it to make sure it is not *too* big. It seems really focused, though, with excellent clarity and upper register, and a much more accessible low Bb (the one "problem note" on this horn), so yeah: this turned out to be a kickass solution for this tuba with my face.

[bloke]

Glad you found something that works better than what you were using, and it would be fine were it someone else’s stuff, as long as it works better for you than something you were using before.

You may have seen that I played a bunch of toot-‘n’-scoots today at nursing homes. I don’t have a better mouthpiece or better horn than I had before, but the second trumpet player in the quintet (third in the orchestra) has really been working hard, and it was very noticeable that he has stepped up his game. He also passed his oral and written exams for his terminal degree, so I’m happy for him, and hope he figures out a way to make that accomplishment into some sort of job/income. That stuff made me smile. I enjoyed the better resonance/harmony/music, and felt better for him as well. The trombone player was playing a straight Bach 36 that I recently slicked out, really picked over the slide, and sold to him, and I believe that his parts were coming out more distinctively than when he was using a larger instrument in the quintet…
Another player discovered that they had been around a positive-testing person, ran to the store just before we played the first little show, and tested negative, but decided to wear a mask - particularly since we were playing in nursing homes…
…so good, good, good, and good.
———————
OK…not a long enough non sequitur post?
I drove to that city today without my wallet. At the end of the first show, one of my two carriage arm brackets have way, during our lunch break – which was short – I had to drag the horn player with me, I used their credit card to buy a little torch at Harbor freight, and then I had to buy some butane at the smoke shop for the torch. I also had to buy some pliers at Harbor freight.
I’ve never soldered without solder acid before, but it worked. (I found a shade tree in the parking lot of a hotel, and used the back of my Toyota matrix as a workbench.) I also drove back home with about 3/4 of a gallon of gas left in my car, since I didn’t have any way to buy gas.
…yet: STILL good

[the elephant]

That is why I always consider field repairs when I slap together a horn for myself. Whatever crazy stuff I do to it has to use as few tools to take it down so that, in a pinch, it can be fully serviceable in a parking lot.

Because brother, you experienced today what my life is all the dang time. I have terrible situational timing and rotten luck. I have *always* been like this, which is why I can live so close to all those casinos and never have the urge to "game".

Because while my friends win twenty grand or a new BMW (both true) I will lose every cent I have on me. Likewise, if something can break, no matter how careful I am with it, no matter how well-constructed it may be, if it is mine and an inconvenient time presents itself, that thing will break.

Some people are born with God's gunsight focused on them. All that fussing with the detachable braces was so that I could work on a horn in an emergency and not need any tools (or just one tool) to work on whatever might decide to crap out on me.

People who say idiotic things like "You make your own luck," have never *had* perpetual bad luck and are talking out their backsides. Sort of like when people who have never actually experienced a genuine asthma attack say idiotic things like "calm down, take deep breaths, you're getting all worked up when this is mostly in your head."

Glad you still have your Shadetree chops in good order. Nice save. The tool and supply kit I have always carried with me (usually used for colleagues who own evil, contrarian contraptions such as oboes) will likely get one of these little butane torches and at least one butane vial added because on-site soldering is quite the little miracle gift just before the downbeat at a venue…

[York-aholic]

I found a shade tree in the parking lot of a hotel, and used the back of my Toyota matrix as a workbench.

Which I believe makes you a shade tree repairman.



Thank you for teeing that one up for me. I am now very proud of myself!

[the elephant]

Today I wanted to work but I wanted to NOT work on this tuba. (I need a break from it, TBH…)

I dinked around cleaning up, organizing, consolidating, etc. Then I decided to hand polish the clock spring levers for my pre-WWII Czech rotary C trumpet. It came from the factory in Prague unlacquered and had not been polished in many decades when I bought it in 1998. I found it in a curio shop along the river in Budapest, and have never bothered to polish it.



I had considered using two of these for my upper levers but decided to hold off, using some French horn levers instead. So today I used Q-tips, Simichrome, and a lot of time, with a big assist by Ella and Louis, and it looks like this now…



Ginger stopped by to help, and to compliment me on my farsighted, well-considered decision to purchase these two red, rolling tool boxes at Harbor Freight back in 2012. These things are really well made and a fraction of the cost of Snap-on, Mac, Matco, etc. I love them and want more!



Then, I sat down outside with the torch and started taking apart and cleaning off solder from most of the Kurath parts that I am no longer using so that I can bag them up and store them for future projects. I am missing two short tubes, one longer one, three ferrules, and four or five braces, etc. from this photograph. But as far as the tubing goes, I cleaned it off, left it in a mild chem bath for about an hour because 1.) this thing was nasty when I got it and I never bothered to correct that, and 2.) one of the previous owners was a heavy smoker — menthols, I might add, and this REEKS when torched. So they are free of all foreign crap now and well-scrubbed inside and out. I plan on buffing off all the old solder pads and generally making everything ready to be used.

How much of this tuba has been replaced? At this point, the question should be: how much hasn't been replaced?

[the elephant]

This shows the loose tubing pile on top, with everything sort of assembled below that. The second photo actually contains MORE tubing parts than the first. (Of course, the brace pile is not present, but I was not working on that stuff today.)

That's 73 individual pieces of tubing and the valve parts. They add up fast.

[bloke]

In the corner of my workroom, there's still a pile of "cimbasso crap" on top of a remote desk...

...though it's not noticeable, due to all of the other epic piles of (and much larger chunks) crap...

...and - come to think of it - there are still two or three piles of Holton compact B-flat crap as well.

[the elephant]

I have been putting this off for a long time. I can't seem to sync up with my suppliers. I either have some spare money I can use for this project and they are out of stock of what I need ("Indefinitely — you know, supply chain issues.") Or they get in what I have been waiting for and I had to spend the little bit of cash I had socked away.

So what ended up happening was that I decided that the French horn levers will not work as they are. My set of Jinbao 410 levers (complete with levers, springs, rack, axle, and acorn nut) are 1.) super cheaply plated, soft brass (rather than the nickel silver that parts like that need to be made from), and 2.) TOO FREAKING LARGE FOR THE INTENDED SPACE. Holy cats, you don't realize just how large these things are until you have to fit them into a small space. Compared to the French horn parts these look like a guy wearing those clown shoes that are three feet long.

I have tried to figure out how to use either one or the other set for months and studied five or six possible locations by mocking up parts and such. It turns out that where I currently have the levers mounted *is* the best location; I did a good job figuring that out some time back, and tried hard to refute the choice — and I can't.

The issue is that these are long, heavy linkages rotating heavy tuba valves, and the horn springs are not up to the task. The one on the thumb lever is adequate but will need some assistance when I link to the other lever. another horn spring would be fine, but that leaves the &very* long and heavy 6th linkage using just one of these springs, and *that* is a no-go.

The solution is to use tuba springs. Great! Now, where do I git the levers/paddles/rack for these MUCH LARGER levers?

And there you go.

So after weeks of putzing around with this, I decided to buy the bar stock, hinge tube, and drill rod needed to make this stuff from scratch. But now that I have the funds needed for this — NOBODY HAS WHAT I NEED IN STOCK!



So I have been putting this off, as I said, and today I gave in and started making this gear from the wrong stuff, meaning I had to do a lot of cutting with the Dremel, the Proxxon, and my Jeweler's saw. I needed to use this bar stock that is exactly as thick as the Miraphone lever platens (can't remember how thick it is; 3mm, 3.5mmm something like that) that was 20mm wide, but my rack needs to be 9mm wide. It also needs to be about 100mm long so that is a LONG DANG WAY TO FREEHAND A PERFECTLY STRAIGHT CUT WITH A FLAT EDGE THROUGH SUCH THICK STOCK. No matter what you do, if you have to freehand it, holding the bar in one hand and the Dremel in the other, you will rock the cutoff wheel a bit and end up with what may be a straight line, but the end of the bar will have all sorts of nicks and flaws, and that edge will not be perpendicular to the flat face of the bar. It takes too much time and force to do this really accurately over such a long line.

Oh, and the 100mm bar also included another 40mm of length (so actually a 140mm freehanded line) as I cut my three axel posts from the same stock so they would match reasonably well with the base bar.

These guys had to be very carefully scribed and then pilot-drilled to ensure the three holes the rod has to go through are exactly in line with each other so the axle does not have to be bent to put it together.

As I keep saying, had I had the correct width of bar stock this would have been four cuts and some filing, and some drilling. If I had a lathe and mill this would have taken me very little time to knock out. But when the Enterprise loses its warp drive, locations that had been hours or days distant suddenly become many, many years away. I am trying to build precision stuff using duct tape, WD-40, and a BFH. Seriously, it's not supposed to be this difficult or this unenjoyable. All I did today was cuss a lot while chucking my Sharpie all over the shop like a child. I have got to get some things to do this sort of work accurately, but that is out of the picture right now.

Anyway, after SIX HOURS of cutting and filing and sanding and cussing I got parts that are barely acceptable. I am now out of rod stock in this size, so I can't even make my platens — just the lever ends and hinges and the rack. However, I have come up with a way to clamp the three posts to the base so that I can braze them together with some accuracy without locator pins. So, when all this is done it should be one of those assemblies where when someone comments on it I will be thinking "You have no idea, dude…"

So I will have to remake that detachable brace to 1st valve where the French horn levers currently live. It has to be heavier to not be flexi under the stress of the two much heavier springs all the time. But that won't be a big deal

Here are some pics that show what six hours of filing to the ratty edge of a thick nickel silver bar will net you. (Note that I did not fully clean up or shape the three posts; I will do that once they are brazed to the base.) thanks a lot for reading this tripe. It has been a frustrating few weeks as I figure this out and make the decision to follow the much harder path out of necessity.

This bar took me all day to cut to shape and then clean up the edges so that it did not look like I had cut it out using a Dremel tool. It looks really decent, too, I think. The posts are still rough and unfinished, but I'll get to them later.


This is not the lever I will be using (which has to be made to fit within the space and still work for tuba-weight stuff). It is one I tried to make using flat stock rather than round, as per Rick Denney's suggestion. It worked well, but I could not make it look "purity" and move on to another solution. It has the hinge tube size and length that I will be using, as well as the flat bar stock for the levers and platens. (It is from the same bar that the bar and three posts were cut from today, actually.)


When I came into the shop this morning I found these two messing with my stuff…

[York-aholic]

The cats weren’t messing with your stuff. They were figuring out the issue and it’s solution. Next they will work on how to communicate it all to you.

[the elephant]

HAHAHA!!! Bravo, sir!

[the elephant]

After several experiences with having to freehand long, straight cuts using the Dremel, I will say this:

I need to invest in some more aggressive files, and probably some lapping plates. You can get lapping plates from about 300 grit up to about 6000, and they are much larger than any file out there. They are fantastic for some things. I got more material removed using 400 grit wet-dry sandpaper than when using my fine files. The finish from the sandpaper was also much nicer. So a lapping plate (like 4"x10") with a coarser grit would work faster and give me a much larger area to slide the workpiece around. (My files are not much longer than what I was working on, so the cutting stokes were really short and almost useless, hence the ridiculous amount of time it took me to file away 0.5mm to level the cut edge.

And more aggressive files shaped like my saxophone tone hole files would make life easier since I don't need such fine files except when leveling the ends of tubes I have cut.

Alas, I have no funds right now — but there is always Christmas!

[bloke]

I understand that the main point is “a desire for a more extensive set of finishing and grinding tools”… and I always respond to the wrong parts of other people’s posts…but I’ve seen people do that to mine so I guess I’m not alone.

I wonder if - like a lot of people - you have 10, 20, or more mouthpieces that you don’t use, probably will never use again, yet they are considered to be somewhat popular sizes/models, and would sell for pretty good money.

Whether the goal would be to collect up some more files and grinding tools, fix a car, or repair an air conditioner, do you possibly have some stuff like this that could be liquidated to generate a few funds?

(I guess there are three or four mouthpieces that I will never use which I keep for reference – and maybe one or two more that are so horrible that no one would want them, but I just don’t feel like throwing them away…but - when I find that I’ve collected up several that I know to be marketable, however they happened to end up here - I eventually do a purge - to turn them into some spending money.)

nearly a non sequitur:
Years ago, I bought quite a few big not cheap rounding rings. Shortly after buying them, I felt like hitting myself in the head with a sledgehammer: “bloke, why in the hell did you buy those?“ … But a couple of years later I start pulling them down and learning to use them. Of course, using them is an added step when repairing large bows and branches of instruments, but they sure as hell help me to end up making those parts rounder, Instead of just smooth. I honestly believe that sometimes the repaired parts end up rounder than they were when they were made… I suppose the only point to this non sequitur is that “tools are cool - particularly after we learn how to use them.”

[the elephant]

I think your purchase of the rings was smart, even if the use/value did not become *real* to you for some time. I am like that, too. I have a number of nice tools I have not yet spent any time learning to use, but when I need them they will be there, they are paid for, and I have a habit of "practicing" with new tools to the benefit of my old junk so that it ends up being sellable. Then I can move on to whatever I needed them for in the first place.

I have a set of wheels needed for making/correcting guard plates but have yet to spend much time with them, so I understand their various uses but have not learned to use them well. I will. Later. I have several guard projects pending, but won't be getting into them until I have nothing else to do for a while. THEN I will learn to use the tools on some junked guards, and with luck, I will make them look good and fit well, and the junked tubas they go on can then be assembled and sold off.

Regarding mouthpieces (and other sellable stuff): I did that a few years ago. We have sold everything we have, just about. The house is now filled exclusively with junk. Some of it I can fix, so when/if that happens I can try to sell it. But TBH, it never got fixed up and sold because, even when it was new, it would have been hard to sell it. After all, it's junk.

I still have two or three mouthpieces that never sold, because if I were to drop the prices any more I would lose money shipping them, which now cost about $15 here at the Yazoo City USPS. It had gone up to $10 before the pandemic, but it went up again, as the smaller boxes are no longer available and the price has gone up.

My bag is not selling because I won't ship it. And that is too bad for me because I won't be willing to ship it, ever. I won't ship anything larger and more fragile than mouthpieces. I will drive to meet someone up to two hours distant, but the price of gas might even end that. So I am limited to the pool of buyers willing to drive to Jackson, Mississippi, which is pretty much nonexistent.

[the elephant]

Today I spent time remaking the three tabs for the lever rack. They needed to be a lot more accurate than what I made the other day. After the first try, I was frustrated, and I wasted several hours figuring out how to make these parts accurately as well as how to clamp them to the base bar positioned *just so* for silver brazing.

I figured out how to do everything to make accurate parts that will go together very nicely using only a Dremel tool, a file, and my torch. I have also been working on the accuracy of my drill press-shaped object. It still has runout (in the spindle, and the arbor is part of the spindle, so it cannot be corrected). It is difficult to get the bit to stay in the center-punched divot, but at least once it starts the hole it will run straight and true.

To get everything lined up/shaped nicely I cut new tabs and soft soldered them together (after having fussed with lining them up in a tiny C clamp I have). Then I spent a lot of time with files to make all the angles as true as I could manage, and then I set up the "nugget" to drill the center hole.

It came out great! I still have to mark and fully round the top into more of a semicircle. It is sort of mashed and lumpy looking right now, but it will be great tomorrow. The bottom face that will be silver brazed to the base bar needs some careful filing to get it to its final flatness. Then I can heat up the "nugget" to separate the parts and clean off all of the lead. Once that is done I can jig up the parts and silver braze them together.

Then I have to make the two levers…

It's going to be tight, but the low-profile screws I used to mount the French horn lever rack ought to fit beneath these springs. I filed off more than I had intended to get these flat on the bottoms. (Fingers crossed. I don't want to have to do this again, so if I have to I will use countersunk screws.)


The hinge rod runs very straight and the tabs all line up nicely, so mounting them correctly should not be a problem.


In the middle is the last hunk of the bar stock I used for this project. Bisecting it was a massive PITA (as described above). Cutting the tabs into the shown shape was a bit of a misadventure.


The runout in the drill press spindle caused the bit to wander up and right before locking into a solid, straight spin. But the hole is dead straight through the other side, and that is all that counts. These are so small that no one will ever notice this tiny misalignment as the hinge rod will run through very straight. Es wird kein Problem sein.

[bloke]

I really admire your determination with little pieces like that - and no milling machine.
I believe many of the European spatula saddles feature crossways under cuts into the bars which assisted in lining up those risers perfectly square and properly spaced - prior to them being silver brazed into place… I can easily imagine (without grooves) those li’l boogers traveling around when the silver solder is molten.
I’m pretty lazy, and just go to the endless crap pile, and look through the tons of endless crap until I find something that’s just right. Maybe that’s something positive about having so much crap…(??)
…I doubt if my oldest daughter will see any advantage to it, after I croak and she has to dispose of all of this mess.
me??? tonight???
I started on another north Mississippi mountain of destruction, picking out their worst Jupiter sousaphone for starters – the one that went “floppita-floppita” when you picked it up. Hey… Except for corks, felts, and swapping out that always-busted pot metal water key (I have a sack of them), it’s finished. I smell sorta funny (caffeinated perspiration, solder acid, and band filth) after messing with that thing, but at least it’s five minutes away from being done.

bloke “and some conscientious young student may very well now be turned on to music, which might prove to be the catalyst which will change their life …BLATTTTT !!!!!”

[the elephant]

I worked on the top curve of the "nugget" until I was happy, then took it outside and unsoldered it into its three constituent "tabs". I had to clean them up a bit. (Thou shalt not silver braze whilst any lead is present. It is an abomination. Thus spake the Acetylene God.)

This is the empty bracket. It will be going into the vinegar for an hour right before I start this post. Then it can be inspected and buffed.


Here is the hinge rod I made this morning. I have to fit and trim the long end, still.


Here is the bracket, hinge rod with both nuts, and both of the hinge tubes to which the levers will be brazed. The springs live on these two roller tubes.


Thanks for reading! I'll post a photo of this once it is completed and buffed. Currently, I am searching my junk bags for adequate material for the lever arms, and I have been sketching how I want them shaped. I'll post stuff about the levers once I have made some progress on that front.

Adios, y'all!

[the elephant]

Okay, DONE!

I'll start work on the levers tomorrow.

The rounded tops are not perfect, but they came out very nice, I think.


The "dot" is a mark from my center punch. That one is tab #1. Can you guess how the other two are marked? Mr. Rodgers knew you could!








Wooo, shiney! (That's the dude on the cover of the Grainger catalog…) <snicker>


Just add levers…

[the elephant]

I ran into a snag (potentially a large one) that I will address if I can't easily remedy it. If I can fix the situation then I won't bother discussing it here.

Today I made my levers, but only the arms. I have not yet decided on the platens, which might end up being 1987 Swiss Kroner coins (made of nickel silver, actually, and very inexpensive) because I like the idea. Otherwise, I will likely use plain, round discs.

I have to hog off some of the bar material. The Platens will fit into a recessed section of the lever, and from about midway down the bottom edge of the lever, it will slowly curve upwards until it comes to a point beneath the platen at the end.

They came out nice and straight, and they are very strong. The action is smooth and fast, and they look GREAT to me — or they will once I have them completed. There is NO SLOP. NONE! Woo-hoo!!!

[bloke]

I might encourage you to put off adding spatulas until the very end - when everything works great and everything is mounted, so you can put your spatulas where your fingers are, instead of where you think your fingers will be.

This is probably already your plan.