The Hard Case Rebuild Thread
Posted: Sat Aug 27, 2022 9:45 pm
Hi! I am starting this as a place for people to show off their work or inquire about case/luggage work. It is dismaying to me that so many here no longer seem to value hard cases. I know *some* do, and this is another place to hang out here if you want to learn or share ideas.
I have no current projects to share. I am just creating this space for future use.
Well, okay, I have two case rebuilds I plan on starting in the late Autumn and try to finish in my spare time by this time next year. One is a Chinese copy of an MTS case that came with an Eastman 6/4 tuba. I plan on trying to use it as a bus case for when the MSO does runouts that are too far for me to drive to in my POV. Currently, I do not have a hard case for my Holton 345. The Eastman 6/4 tubas are noticeably smaller than a 345. (So are the Yorks, if you did not know.)
The other is a wood-shell case that is bare wood, with a lot of the outer ply of the plywood stripped off or trashed. It is not a 186 case but it is a Mirafone wood case from the 1970s, whichever model it was made for. All the hardware is gone. The plush liner is destroyed. In fact, this shell has sat exposed to the elements (but covered and off the ground) in my carport for a few years now. Oddly, it has held up very well, so I have decided to try to build it out in a way that will benefit me.
I don't intend to sell either case. And I have a few more that I probably will never use, but if I can get them refurbished (or fully rebuilt) for cheap so that a realistic price would not have me losing money, I might offer them up for sale at some point. But I'm not sure what I want to do with those cases right now.
The wood-shell case needs to be gutted and very carefully cleaned to see whether any insects have taken up residence. If so, I can toss it; I got it for free, so no loss there. I think it was for a 185 as a 186 is just a bit too tall for it. Just barely, as in it fits but not with any sort of meaningful padding. Of course, these were poorly padded anyway, so maybe it *is* a 186 case. I'll likely bring it inside after the monsoon rains have abated and it has had time to dehumidify some.
The plastic Eastman case is likewise too short for the 345. However, I gutted the crappy foam blocks and shifted them around a lot until I came up with a workable plan. Unfortunately, the valance halves for the plastic shells have to be mated together and then bent outwards at the bottom bow by about an inch. I have done this in the past; it sucks, but if you do a careful job and make it look decent, the thin plastic shell can be reshaped to fit using a heat gun. If you do it right it will not be obvious at first glance that you did any reshaping to the shell.
Inside the shell some secrets become apparent. The most important one is that both halves of the shell sport an insert at the bell end that is pop-riveted to the actual shell to provide reinforcement for the bell and the wheel holes. The bell area is pretty tight, too, so I will remove those.
The shell is a bit too narrow for how far out front the pistons sit on this tuba, so I will also cut out the section where stuff sticks up too far and rivet in a small box extension like you see on a lot of the form-fitting cases.
Once the valve extension box has been installed, the two reinforcement panels at the bell have been removed, and the bottom bow area has been extended by an inch — and it all looks okay to me — then I plan on fiberglassing the exterior of the shell halves. I have to make sure this kind of plastic will adhere to the epoxy used in the marine fiberglass kits I like to use. (It should be fine.)
After the shell has been reshaped, beefed up, and painted, I will then build out the interior with much better padding which is a high-impact closed-cell elastomer material I like to work with. It is hard if you just bump it a bit, but it absorbs a LOT of energy in hard impacts. This can be fairly thin all around the outer edge of the shell and around the bell rim, with a softer foam placed on top before the liner material encases each section. So it will have a sort of two-stage padding which ought to be just fine so long as the damned charter driver keeps the bus on the pavement. (I have been on a bus that rolled. It was horrible, and I know what a tuba in a wood-shell case looks like after it has been smashed between the wall of the luggage bay and a timpani in a touring trunk. (Hint: the timpani case won.)
So if the bus rolls over and I die, at least my wife will have a usable tuba to sell to pay for my pine box and some flowers.
Gutting this case today taught me a lot about the corners cut today with cases, and how the fake MTS cases work while being so inexpensive.
Here are some photos of how the Holton fits when tightly packed into the bottom shell half using the craptastic Chinese foam, which is somewhere between styrofoam and foam rubber, with a little give, but if you compress it too much it disintegrates. (It is only five years old and ought not to disintegrate like this for many more years. So inferior foam is used to save money, which is fine. The whole case is a knock-off and it does its job very well for about five years, and in that time if you want to improve the case it just about falls apart once you start pulling the blocks out. The cheap shell is, in my opinion, not really that much of a compromise. I think the big money saver to the builder is in the foam and liner, as well as in the hardware. The shells seem to be as good as or better than some of the MTS or SKB cases currently sold if just a tad thinner.
In fact, the only reason I decided to take the time to do this is that the shell seems to be adequate for my needs. If I bought one of these nicer Chinese tubas with one of these fake MTS cases I would definitely keep the case and probably improve the hardware or padding if it started to get ragged out.
Okay, so it fits. But it fits like crap.
The horn is much wider at the bottom bow than the Eastman. If I flip the bow block and smoosh it tightly this shape and thickness will work. The bell end was also padded while this was crammed in place. As things stand, the horn is too long for this shell to have any sort of usable padding. One more inch of space would work very nicely…
The bottom block that protects the "off" side of the horn as the case sits on the ground is just about perfect. It needs to be much better foam, though. And the lid needs a matching block and another that will come down onto the 4th slide and prevent it from shifting around while in the case. The mouthpiece block is just a stupid waste of space. I will build out a storage box in this area. The lid will have a Winter-style folder storage area, too.
With the bell padded as I want, this is how tight the bottom bow is. Bending the valance outwards an inch and heating the shell to reshape it will provide what I need. I am not sure I can make this look good, however.
Here is the reverse: The bell padding has been removed, the bottom bow is now fully padded, and this is the space the bell has to live in. If I can reshape the shell as I want this should not be an issue.
The valves are compressed about 1/4" with the lid open about 2", so with them being that far from the lid edge the valves will compress about halfway with the lid fully seated. A 1" tall extension box for the valves will have to be fashioned to fix this.
That valve box needs to be installed right there…
The reshaping would take the flattened shape of the bow end and round it thusly. It is not hard to do, but the shell might be ruined if I reshape it too much or am careless as I work. Yes, I have done this sort of work in the past.
Most of the hardware is affixed using Phillips head screws or pop rivets. Easy peasy. However, I have not looked to see how the valance is attached. That could be an issue if I do not want to have to buy more extruded aluminum to replace it after I discover that it has to be destroyed to get it off. It looks to have been crimped on, and that is easy to remove. We shall see…
These are the two large double-hulled areas. The reinforcement panels seem to have been glued in place. If this is typical Chinese work it will be hot glue and pretty easy to get apart.
An unexpected nice touch is that the makers skive the edges of the reinforcement panels to make the transition from the thick area into the thinned-walled section, and not something you can feel through the liner and padding. Unexpected, to say the least, I was happy to see just how decent these shells are. The liner material and blocking are junk, the hardware is fairly decent, and the shells are excellent. Nice!
I have no current projects to share. I am just creating this space for future use.
Well, okay, I have two case rebuilds I plan on starting in the late Autumn and try to finish in my spare time by this time next year. One is a Chinese copy of an MTS case that came with an Eastman 6/4 tuba. I plan on trying to use it as a bus case for when the MSO does runouts that are too far for me to drive to in my POV. Currently, I do not have a hard case for my Holton 345. The Eastman 6/4 tubas are noticeably smaller than a 345. (So are the Yorks, if you did not know.)
The other is a wood-shell case that is bare wood, with a lot of the outer ply of the plywood stripped off or trashed. It is not a 186 case but it is a Mirafone wood case from the 1970s, whichever model it was made for. All the hardware is gone. The plush liner is destroyed. In fact, this shell has sat exposed to the elements (but covered and off the ground) in my carport for a few years now. Oddly, it has held up very well, so I have decided to try to build it out in a way that will benefit me.
I don't intend to sell either case. And I have a few more that I probably will never use, but if I can get them refurbished (or fully rebuilt) for cheap so that a realistic price would not have me losing money, I might offer them up for sale at some point. But I'm not sure what I want to do with those cases right now.
The wood-shell case needs to be gutted and very carefully cleaned to see whether any insects have taken up residence. If so, I can toss it; I got it for free, so no loss there. I think it was for a 185 as a 186 is just a bit too tall for it. Just barely, as in it fits but not with any sort of meaningful padding. Of course, these were poorly padded anyway, so maybe it *is* a 186 case. I'll likely bring it inside after the monsoon rains have abated and it has had time to dehumidify some.
The plastic Eastman case is likewise too short for the 345. However, I gutted the crappy foam blocks and shifted them around a lot until I came up with a workable plan. Unfortunately, the valance halves for the plastic shells have to be mated together and then bent outwards at the bottom bow by about an inch. I have done this in the past; it sucks, but if you do a careful job and make it look decent, the thin plastic shell can be reshaped to fit using a heat gun. If you do it right it will not be obvious at first glance that you did any reshaping to the shell.
Inside the shell some secrets become apparent. The most important one is that both halves of the shell sport an insert at the bell end that is pop-riveted to the actual shell to provide reinforcement for the bell and the wheel holes. The bell area is pretty tight, too, so I will remove those.
The shell is a bit too narrow for how far out front the pistons sit on this tuba, so I will also cut out the section where stuff sticks up too far and rivet in a small box extension like you see on a lot of the form-fitting cases.
Once the valve extension box has been installed, the two reinforcement panels at the bell have been removed, and the bottom bow area has been extended by an inch — and it all looks okay to me — then I plan on fiberglassing the exterior of the shell halves. I have to make sure this kind of plastic will adhere to the epoxy used in the marine fiberglass kits I like to use. (It should be fine.)
After the shell has been reshaped, beefed up, and painted, I will then build out the interior with much better padding which is a high-impact closed-cell elastomer material I like to work with. It is hard if you just bump it a bit, but it absorbs a LOT of energy in hard impacts. This can be fairly thin all around the outer edge of the shell and around the bell rim, with a softer foam placed on top before the liner material encases each section. So it will have a sort of two-stage padding which ought to be just fine so long as the damned charter driver keeps the bus on the pavement. (I have been on a bus that rolled. It was horrible, and I know what a tuba in a wood-shell case looks like after it has been smashed between the wall of the luggage bay and a timpani in a touring trunk. (Hint: the timpani case won.)
So if the bus rolls over and I die, at least my wife will have a usable tuba to sell to pay for my pine box and some flowers.
Gutting this case today taught me a lot about the corners cut today with cases, and how the fake MTS cases work while being so inexpensive.
Here are some photos of how the Holton fits when tightly packed into the bottom shell half using the craptastic Chinese foam, which is somewhere between styrofoam and foam rubber, with a little give, but if you compress it too much it disintegrates. (It is only five years old and ought not to disintegrate like this for many more years. So inferior foam is used to save money, which is fine. The whole case is a knock-off and it does its job very well for about five years, and in that time if you want to improve the case it just about falls apart once you start pulling the blocks out. The cheap shell is, in my opinion, not really that much of a compromise. I think the big money saver to the builder is in the foam and liner, as well as in the hardware. The shells seem to be as good as or better than some of the MTS or SKB cases currently sold if just a tad thinner.
In fact, the only reason I decided to take the time to do this is that the shell seems to be adequate for my needs. If I bought one of these nicer Chinese tubas with one of these fake MTS cases I would definitely keep the case and probably improve the hardware or padding if it started to get ragged out.
Okay, so it fits. But it fits like crap.
The horn is much wider at the bottom bow than the Eastman. If I flip the bow block and smoosh it tightly this shape and thickness will work. The bell end was also padded while this was crammed in place. As things stand, the horn is too long for this shell to have any sort of usable padding. One more inch of space would work very nicely…
The bottom block that protects the "off" side of the horn as the case sits on the ground is just about perfect. It needs to be much better foam, though. And the lid needs a matching block and another that will come down onto the 4th slide and prevent it from shifting around while in the case. The mouthpiece block is just a stupid waste of space. I will build out a storage box in this area. The lid will have a Winter-style folder storage area, too.
With the bell padded as I want, this is how tight the bottom bow is. Bending the valance outwards an inch and heating the shell to reshape it will provide what I need. I am not sure I can make this look good, however.
Here is the reverse: The bell padding has been removed, the bottom bow is now fully padded, and this is the space the bell has to live in. If I can reshape the shell as I want this should not be an issue.
The valves are compressed about 1/4" with the lid open about 2", so with them being that far from the lid edge the valves will compress about halfway with the lid fully seated. A 1" tall extension box for the valves will have to be fashioned to fix this.
That valve box needs to be installed right there…
The reshaping would take the flattened shape of the bow end and round it thusly. It is not hard to do, but the shell might be ruined if I reshape it too much or am careless as I work. Yes, I have done this sort of work in the past.
Most of the hardware is affixed using Phillips head screws or pop rivets. Easy peasy. However, I have not looked to see how the valance is attached. That could be an issue if I do not want to have to buy more extruded aluminum to replace it after I discover that it has to be destroyed to get it off. It looks to have been crimped on, and that is easy to remove. We shall see…
These are the two large double-hulled areas. The reinforcement panels seem to have been glued in place. If this is typical Chinese work it will be hot glue and pretty easy to get apart.
An unexpected nice touch is that the makers skive the edges of the reinforcement panels to make the transition from the thick area into the thinned-walled section, and not something you can feel through the liner and padding. Unexpected, to say the least, I was happy to see just how decent these shells are. The liner material and blocking are junk, the hardware is fairly decent, and the shells are excellent. Nice!
