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nickel protective cap for upper small bow (to protect it from arm/wrist micro-tuning choreography)






































This was sorta hard...I'm not certain that I'd agree to do it for someone else.

I might (??) be though monkeying around with this instrument, and school repairs are still existential, but small quantities/latecomers/etc., and perhaps (??) I can muster up enough enthusiasm to polish and lacquer all of these alterations...

I did tin the complete underside of that cap with solder prior to installing it, and wiped it down very thin. It might have been a little bit easier to solder - had I gone ahead and cut the lacquer out on the instrument another millimeter or so, because feeding it in right next to lacquer is always a challenge.

The nice thing about soldering on nickel caps - rather than brass - and smaller caps - rather than large - is that they have much less of a tendency to swell, when heated for soldering.

As is known, the best strategy for avoiding this swelling is to heat the part to which the cap is being soldered, and just let the cap pick up residual heat.

(observing the background of some pictures), do you typically do this kinda thing in the kitchen?

I gotta say, I love seeing these sorts of threads. Excellent stuff. What is that tool you were using to remove the lacquer?

I just don't like taking that one particular instrument out because it's so large and fragile. I've had it out in the shop before, but carrying it in there, moving a bunch of stuff out of the way due to its size and all that.. I have that Wenger tuba stand in my tuba room that I could use to work on the instrument when the bell needed to be up, and I had that marble counter in the kitchen to work on the instrument when the bell needed to be down, so...

To get the lacquer off, I used some fairly coarse cloth-backed sandpaper little pieces of it - torn off of a narrow roll, a sanding stick - seen in the picture - which features a tension spring and a thin band of sandpaper, and also used a three-cornered solder scraper to simply scratch lacquer away in some of the tight places, and maybe edges.

no fibbing:
Neither of those two adjacent mouthpipe-attaching flanges fell off the instrument, not even once.

the picture with me holding the cheaters:
I put those on when I began sanding. I actually found two identically-shaped pair yesterday morning at a thrift store (where I also found a good fitting black suit coat, along with the perfect shape and height replacement carafe for our Cuisinart coffee maker)...one pair being the black ones in the picture, and the other being some whatever those shell-looking brown colored ones are called. Up close - such as maybe 15 inches away - oddly those two pair of $2 used cheaters are nearly perfect for my up-close vision. The left lens does very little, as my left eye focuses pretty darn well up close, and the right lens seems to be just right for eliminating my double vision in that eye, up close. They are no good for gigs, because I need those to focus at least another foot or more away... I promise - someday soon - I'm going to get some actual eyewear and cataract evaluation, but - right now - other things take precedence.

Stopping to take these pictures was pretty difficult for me - because doing that was a distraction, and - whenever I'm working on instruments - I'm always concentrating on driving towards completion of whatever the project is, whether it be large or small. You probably have noticed that I typically post very few pictures taken "in progress".

I continue to be skeptical re: the "progressive" lenses.

Just give me two pair of driving glasses, two pair of music-reading glasses, and two pair of "staring a taps, trying to figure out which one is M4 x .75 and which one is 8-32" glasses.

I suspect that the "progressive" lenses are - necessarily - going to feature blurry/of-no-use vertical areas - within their range, and I'm not confident that I would pick up on the "head-tilting" habit particularly quickly. Plus...Glasses - these days - are really cheap.

this:

> If I'm looking down the highway (evaluating which vehicles might be operated by drunks, and which ones might be operated by cops), I want EVERYTHING within the field offered by the lenses to feature the "looking down the road" availability.

> If I'm reading sheet music on a stand, I want the ENTIRE page to be in focus...(and who looks at the music director..?? - other than when things change...and we should LISTEN more than LOOK - in those instances).

> If I'm staring at tiny band instrument parts - same: I want my ENTIRE field of vision to focus on whatever I'm staring at.

I have progressives for every day use. They are handy. I do have 3 pairs of prescription reading glasses that I keep in various gig bags. The field of vision on my daily glasses is not tall enough for playing any instrument

LeMark wrote: ↑Sat Aug 12, 2023 1:44 pm I have progressives for every day use. They are handy. I do have 3 pairs of prescription reading glasses that I keep in various gig bags. The field of vision on my daily glasses is not tall enough for playing any instrument

As long as they're cheap, I might give one pair of shot.

Very

Zenni.com

LeMark wrote: ↑Sat Aug 12, 2023 2:22 pm Very

Zenni.com

Do places still offer frames in sizes that line up with eye spacing, nose position, and ear distance from the front of the head, or just "here they are buddy" ?

You have to enter your ocular width, but I cant think that they have ever asked about a temple measurement

Let me qualify something

Progressive lenses are never cheap. The prescription reading glasses I get are so cheap they could be considered disposable

Their price on progressives will shame any place that you've previously bought glasses, but I still wouldn't call them cheap

LeMark wrote: ↑Sat Aug 12, 2023 3:23 pm Let me qualify something

Progressive lenses are never cheap. The prescription reading glasses I get are so cheap they could be considered disposable

Their price on progressives will shame any place that you've previously bought glasses, but I still wouldn't call them cheap

I'm SEVERAL YEARS overdue upgrading my prescription(s), but I was going to a place where a (thorough) eye exam PLUS a pair of glasses was $100...

...Has it become even less expensive...??

oh yeah: The eye doctor was hot.

Like everything else, prices in the industry have gone sky high

LeMark wrote: ↑Sat Aug 12, 2023 5:04 pm Like everything else, prices in the industry have gone sky high

That place boasted/boasts very low prices...I guess I'll check with them and see what their post-coup prices are like.

hmm...

https://www.facebook.com/reel/117038491 ... 7S9Ucbxw6v

bloke "The Science"