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50% of the bell was pulled away (un-soldered) from the bell elbow, and the inside curve of the bell flare (where it was supposed to be soldered to the bell elbow) was wadded up into a ball - with compound creases (creases folded over themselves).

This was after two hours of efforts (and pissed off, because I was trying to get it done in an hour). The ugly at the bottom is where I ("hard" soldered) silver brazed a crack in the rim back together. I'll clean it up with a Dremel, I guess.

The stuff at the top right doesn't it exist. Obviously, my phone camera lens is filthy. I usually keep my phone in the house, but (yup) I had it out in the shop....should not have.

The missing silver (where it was all f'ed up) is not from me buffing the crap out of it, I barely went over the bell interior (lightly buffed it) with yellow buffing compound, to inspect/find little spots that were out of curve/out of round, and where small dents may have remained.

On the picture of the back, you can see where I soldered the two parts of the bell back together (after repairing the flare enough to make that possible).





fun?
rewarding?
Show me the money.

Keeping high school music going one sousaphone at a time...

It would be interesting to see before pictures.

Probably something like this, but would still be interesting (to me at least):

yeah...
Those.

See...??
You don' nee' no BEE-FOUR PEEK-TOORES.

I'm thinking that Mrs. bloke must have no memory whatsoever...
Whenever she sees crap like this, it's always something like "OH MY GOD !!!"...
...and it's not as if she hasn't - time-after-time - seen crap like this straightened back out.

It's so thin that I'm opening up a dialogue (so far: monologue) with the band director about either replacing the flare (with maybe someone's 24" 20J flare, etc.) or replacing the entire bell, but putting a finish on this bell and having it as a spare...OR...

...sending this bell up to Anderson to get 3/1000ths of copper put on it (de facto 6/1000ths thicker) which should add a decent amount of stability (and then the subsequent silver would add another "most of a thousandth"...YET...light buffing (interior) and careful sandblasting (exterior) would take a thousandth or so back off, so...

Rhino line it!

York-aholic wrote: ↑Fri Jun 09, 2023 7:20 am Rhino line it!

You know...
SOMEONE SOMEDAY should try making sousaphones out of fiberglass, plastic, or resin...

When I was about 3/4th of the way through getting it straightened out, it was making some of those "work-hardened" noises...but - as it became more symmetrical (thankfully) - those noises stopped, and it behaved better.