spectator heads up: possible restoration and sale of my LAST attic 186 BB-flat

[bloke]

As time allows, I've been trying to pull down so-called attic treasures, restore them, and get them sold. I don't see my offspring "sorting through stuff that has potential value but is currently little more than boxes of parts" as a future pleasant task for them, and I see it as something to be avoided. Further, if I can get this stuff pulled down, restored, and sold, it's - you know - money, even though (thanks to our Benevolent Rulers) money isn't worth much, these days.

Quite on purpose, I restored the attic 186 tubas from the most challenging to the least, so I'm hoping that this last one will not suck up a ton of time in order to get it out the door. You may remember that the most recent one involved a "krantz-plant"... something interesting and challenging that I had never before tried.

Assuming approval, this last one (as with the "krantz-plant" one) is likely going to be sold to a school.
I've been trying to finish a Holton 345 B-flat (old twin-spin thread), but - even though I have people who have expressed interest in it - there's only interest in it, and not an order for it... and what if I play the 345 after it's done, and decide that I like it?
This 186 will sell for less than a beautifully restored 345, but - again - it would be an order rather than simply interest or "call me when it's done; I'd like to see it".

If there's a P.O. found in my inbox this next week, I'll probably start tearing into it and I may take a few more pictures than I normally do, even though it's just work, and nothing particularly out of the ordinary.

This tuba's valve section had some really ridiculously abused rotors (stuff like sanding down of bent stems, etc.) and I think I documented (thread?) removing this valve section from the body, sorting through old Miraphone rotors I have, and finding some that fit in the casings housing the two trashed rotors - finding one that fit perfectly with no work, and finding another one that was able to be fitted to the other casing with only about an hour's worth of work (as Miraphone's shop charge for fitting new rotors to old casings is not cheap, and nor is the roundtrip shipping, even of a valve section only). This is also an instrument that featured those handmade universal t-joints which were hopelessly rusted up, so I reached in my big fat grab bag of Miraphone S-arm linkage and also set up and fitted a nice set of four of those to drive these rotors...
... so this instrument has already had some pre-restoration work done to it by me, and another thing that's going to really speed this one up is that I'm going to "spend" a new/old stock 16-1/2 bell (distant past eBay B.I.N. luck) on it, as its original bell had been worked over by young scholars (fancy private school) to the point that it was unrepairable... I'm pretty sure I cut the lower part off of that trashed original bell to convert a King detachable recording bell to an upright bell... ' anyone remember back when I did two of those?

To me, these sorts of threads are nearly as interesting as watching grass grow, but others seem to find them interesting. Thus me thinking that maybe I should put up a few pictures if this project ends up being launched.

Finally, I've decided to keep the attic treasure inventory confidential. I didn't buy it to sell it as is to frankentubists; I bought it to fix it up and sell it, but - though I'm pretty fast - I'm not Superman-fast and - were I reveal to reveal all of what's up there - I'd have people asking me to hurry up and finish every single thing that's up there so they could buy it, and - mostly being someone who repairs other people's instruments as well as going around blatting on tubas for paychecks, everyone who would express strong interest in things on that list would end up being frustrated, because they would wait months or (probably) years without that instrument being made ready to sell to them...
... so they are going to end up coming down one at a time, being repaired and restored one at a time, and being sold one at a time.

Anyway, if this sale is approved, I'll put some pictures in this thread. Otherwise, it can become a thread for food pictures, Oktoberfest beer girls, poking a bit of fun at those who take themselves way too seriously - as well as passionately believing things that aren't so, and the like.

... All of this blather having been typed above, I still have a fairly considerable stack of repair work remaining from two schools (one of them being a new school I picked up, as so many of the band directors are frustrated with the quality of service they've been receiving elsewhere, and they need these back soon, because they are concert instruments used in the spring semester) as well as some frankentuba 6/4 bows to iron out for one of my frankentuba customers.