He is an amateur trumpet player, very fond of the French style trumpets (which basically are the pattern for all of the American trumpets, except for how different manufacturers diverged from the original French design). He has this really old (actual French) French Besson, he has a Benge made by King (with the Fullerton tooling but made in Eastlake), and he also has a Kanstul/California French Besson. All three of them had rotten or broken mouth pipe tubes.
I looked around and I found that I had some new/old stock Fullerton/Benge mouthpipes that fit everything but the largest model and also not the Claude Gordon model. I believe they fit the 1, 2, and 3 models.
I told him to bring them over and we would put mouth pipes on them without me charging him anything, but - if he wanted to go the whole nine yards and restore them - that at that point he would need to pay for me to get filthy in the buffing room as well as any other required repairs and (of course) for round trip shipping and plating costs, but I told him that if he never got them plated that me putting the mouth pipes on them would be absolutely on me.
It sounds like this post is about me paying back a favor, but it what it's actually about is how close to the same the old California Benge mouth pipes are to the ancient French Besson mouthpipes. That long delicate French receiver (which could easily crack, if not unsoldered and handled ever so gingerly) fit the Benge mouth pipe tube with only a little bit of exterior sanding on the tip, and - on the large end - I only had to trim off a quarter of an inch of length, and I only had to swell the insertion part by a few thousands of an inch (and it didn't even show as a swell when sighting down the mouth pipe tube). I was tickled at the fit, even though Benge was absolutely patterned after French Besson....
...so one horrible old patched together pipe is now in the scrap brass, his made in France trumpet is not only more whole, but I also did some other stuff to it, and he went home quite pleased. I was also pleased at how compatible these pipes were. I really didn't feel like custom making any trumpet mouth pipes, and I'm even more hopeful that other of these same pipes - which I have - will fit just as nicely on the Kanstul-Besson and the King-made Benge.
..."but bloke, aren't you a tuba repair specialist?"
Geez Louise, I'm so tired of people who are that dumb. Doing stuff to trumpets - compared to doing stuff to tubas - is sort of like installing a roadside mailbox vs. building a completely wired-and-plumbed workshop.
.I view "trumpet specialists" as those who either won't or can't affect repairs and alterations on other instruments. WERE IT THAT people ONLY brought me trumpets.
