Holton 345 Redux

[Yorkboy]

I worked on my Proxxon mini miter saw for about an hour today, and the cutting angle is much closer to being true, now.

How did you eventually true up the blade? Does it have anything to do with the two cap screws in the back of the saw?

[the elephant]

Mine was true. It ended up getting knocked out due to my holding down the workpiece with a lot of force to keep it from moving. I have found that to avoid warping/ovalizing slide tubes I cannot close the vise jaws tightly enough, so I use the vise to align the work and then press down. The base and carriage are both aluminum, I guess. The carriage bend just a bit. I currently have a shim in place. I am still not happy with it, though, and plan to take it apart and shim up the saw with the base via those two cap head hex bolts you mentioned.

Also, I discovered the depth-of-cut limiter screw, so now I can get a lot more life from the corundum wheels. I have not yet tried the metal bade. I promise I will. I had not posted in your thread because I am still tinkering with the saw and have not come to any hard conclusions, yet.

[the elephant]

THE CONUNDRUM

Do you see it?

(I will explain this a bit later tonight.)

[pittbassdaddy]

Position and angle of the valve set relative to the downstream tubing. Also the length of tubing off of the 5th valve.

[Tubajug]

Looks like that small bow is touching the piston casing now.

[the elephant]

Here is the set of issues, in order. (Pay attention, kids. It gets complicated…)

Original MTS crook was hand-bent by Mr. Rusk. It was short, narrow, unevenly tapered, and did not have a uniform curvature. I had an old York sousaphone crook that was of the same small and large end diameters. It was a bit wider, so the taper was spread out a little better, with no weird, sudden expansion as the original crook had introduced.

When I moved the 5th from the leadpipe to the large side of the MTS I had to remove the dogleg to make room. This angled the MTS. (It had faced the front more or less flat. Removing the dogleg (which bent straight to the rear) allowed the wider crook to fit without any major surgery. It was a happy coincidence that it was just sitting there in a box all these years and would fit my new geometry perfectly. Hooray. I made a new leadpipe that tapered much more accurately. Life was good.

I decided to fully rebuild this horn sometime back, and when I did I happened upon a MTS crook (B&S) on eBay with the same end diameters, with a width (radius) a bit more than an inch wider than the York crook (and 2.5" wider than Rusk's crook). This was ideal, as the taper matched that of the leadpipe perfectly.

Most importantly: This crook was wide enough to shift the valve section over and allow me to flip my weird 5th valve so that the slide could be routed to the rear of the tuba. It had been "backward" so that the slide traveled up the centerline of the bell. It worked really well but looked stupid. Flipping the valve would give me a much more conventional-looking tuba. GREAT!

I designed in all of this fun, new stuff without realizing that I had added two inches to my previous design. To use the York crook I had to shorten the MTS. Now it was as short as I was willing to allow. It was too short by my way of thinking before I even bought the horn. Shortening it once was a real cringer for me. I was not going to do it again.

So I had to figure out where to remove two inches from the horn. After doing a lot of measuring and eyeballing I came to the conclusion that Mr. Rusk chopped out all the removable tubing. Any more cutting anywhere in the bugle would lead to some issues I did not want to deal with.

My problem was that I could not get crooks that bent tightly enough on the slide ports of my rotary valve.

One day, after having pulled out all my hair fussing over this, I noticed that the 1st slide upper runner on my 186 was a *very* tight bend, and it played just fine, with no weird tuning or response quirks. I needed a pair of larger-sized tubes for this valve. I checked my St. Pete tube stock and that same short 1st runner did not have the tight bend. Then I noticed that the old Miraphone 190 *did* sport this bend.

The bores did not match, however, so I ordered a Miraphone .835" valve and all the crooks and tubing I thought I might want.

The end result is the version on the right. As much as I prefer the wider MTS crook and the location of the valve set within the 6th branch, the one on the right worked very well in the past, and this new 5th valve allows me to get things back to that unhappy-looking setup where everything fits and the horn is in tune. No additional surgery is needed. I can even reuse my old leadpipe.

So, the valve section setup on the left, while much nicer, adds two inches, one in the MTS crook, and one from shifting everything an inch farther from the bell. The new Miraphone parts allow me to put stuff back while retaining the new 5th slide routing.

Sometimes, in order to move forward, we have to move backward.

[the elephant]

Here is a photo of the two 5th valves side-by-side. The St. Petersburg valve is on the left. The Miraphone valve is on the right. THIS is what will allow me to keep my old valve section location on the bugle AND allow me to get the 5th slide off of the bell and tucked in the back where it belongs.

[the elephant]

Saint Petersburg



Miraphone



This moved the 5th valve bore up from .827" to .835", in case anyone gives a crap about that…

[Ace]

Wade, when/where did you pick up your skills in instrument repair. While in military service, were there Army instrument repair persons who passed on to you their skills?
Did you apprentice at a civilian repair shop or school? Are you partly self taught? What's the story?

Ace

[the elephant]

My so-called "education" started in 1980 when my HS band director had the tuba technician from the music store across the highway come out to give all 20 of the tuba players a four-hour master class on rotary valve care. It was fascinating to me. As a part of our band's repair and maintenance budget, each of us received a brown Naugahyde Mirafone zipper pouch with a wooden hammer, a dowel, a flathead screwdriver, oil, grease, a cloth, etc. I still have my pouch, and I still use the hammer and dowel on a regular basis.

Anyway, four hours was not much, but the info is stuff that is no longer taught, and you have to learn it on the job. (Like how to true up a rear bearing plate, which on these old Mirafones had no internal lip to drive the plate home true. I am sure you know the trick.) The important thing that happened that day was that I got to know this tech. I started coming on Saturdays to watch him work. I did this for four years. I never was allowed to touch anything, but they did not kick me out.

Ever since then I have wanted to work on tubas.

In the Army, the School of Music had an outstanding repair shop with a great crew of sergeants and petty officers who put the fear of a very wrathful Uncle Sam into you when you tried to clean and turn in your GI instrument at graduation. They handled this like an armorer taking in M-16s; it had to be CLEAN! :-) These gentlemen were also very giving of their time and experience, and I learned through osmosis again for a few months.

At my band, we had a complete repair shop but no repairman. I was the assistant Music Librarian, and the shop was directly across the passageway from the library. After some time I figured out that my library key fit the lock on the shop. This was a mistake by the Supply Sergeant, who was supposed to rekey all the locks in the building every year or so. Anyway, I "broke in" one night with some friends and we fired up a torch and started soldering. I used some spare French horn parts to create my first project: a water bong. It was bare brass, so it was probably very toxic to actually use, but I did not want to use it. I just wanted it to live on a shelf in my barracks room. What can I say? I was a 21-year-old nitwit.

At North Texas, they also had an excellent repair shop and another very giving tech who let me watch for five years.

After I won my job in Jackson I found our 2nd oboist was the foreman for the largest shop in the state, when I had to have a boo-boo fixed on my Kalison Daryl Smith. I applied for a job that same afternoon. Charlie was not there at the time, though. Later, at a rehearsal, he told me they had seven techs on full-time and did not need anyone to apprentice. I was really disappointed.

However, two years later he approached me and asked, "Can you start coming in at 9:00 every morning? We let some people go for various reasons and now need a brass person." The program was actually written down in a big ring binder with all the projects and tests I would have to do. It was fully paid (no commission, no real production work at all, but excellent BCBS insurance and a sort of lame pension plan, paid holidays, cash bonuses on occasion — very nice for a two-year apprenticeship!

I was really excited and I plowed through all that stuff in six months. All those years of watching helped me puck skills up quickly. I was on a "commission + hourly draw" deal that was far better than any of the other stores in the state. In slow times you could not end up owing the store when you did not work. Instead, we were cross-trained in a few things, so when it got slow we did that part of the time. I did sales, shipping, and some of the shop accounting since I had been a retail store manager in years past.

I stayed there for a decade. Since my boss was in the orchestra I never had issues with conflicts; the MSO won out every time. I would just work when I could, and pull late evenings to make up the hours if we were busy, or not bother if we were slow.

I learned enough to run my own shop during that time. And I learned that I hate doing work for people. I prefer to flip horns, where the work is done to my satisfaction and the price is posted — take it or leave it.

I had to stop doing this work for years because I had a sweet part-time teaching gig through the MSO, so again, when there were conflicts the orchestra always won out. From 2001 to 2010 I did no work at all in this field. In 2010 the old man who owned the store passed away and AMRO in Memphis bought up all the tools and parts. When I had to fix something on my horns I was always welcomed to come in and use their facilities and supplies for free, but this ended. That was when I decided to tool up and start working at home. I have done a lot of studying and hacking to get my skills back, and I still have some gaps. I am currently teaching myself double reed work and have an old, German wooden bassoon that hates me, but she'll come around, I am sure. I have five oboes sitting here, too. This is why I sort of disappear in the Repair Forum: I am doing stuff that no one here would care about. I have also been learning to use my crappy DDR-era German lathe. It is crappy because I am still locating some of the needed parts. However, once complete it will not be crappy at all.

Sorry that was so long…



EDITED for about 30 freaking typos. Stupid, tiny phone keyboard…

[prairieboy1]

A very interesting read! Thanks for posting!

[the elephant]

I think I have my 4th valve routed now.

I will put a super short slide leg (1") on the Miraphone 5th crook coming out of the inner 4th knuckle. It has to be super short because to get it out would require the MTS to be pulled first, and there will be a brace across the MTS anyway, so in the end, there will be no more pull space than an inch. This slide would only for cleaning or maintenance. This knuckle has never once produced water; I have always had a water key down there and it has never needed to be emptied. But a long run of tubing with a curve at each end is not so fun to wash out, so I like all my crooks to be functional slides when practicable.

From that crook, I will use a Miraphone 186 5th slide dogleg. That will attach to a Miraphone (Is this some sort of theme? Yes. Yes, it is.) part that is the complete run of tubing for the old two-whole-step system. It is the exact diameter and shape needed for this. I got it by accident. (Eva misunderstood what part I was trying to order. I told her I would put it to use, so no refund was needed. I like Eva a lot.) It is fortuitous that it fits my need perfectly.

That long hoop will climb up behind the leadpipe next to the 6th branch and curve around the outside face of it as well until it dives down beneath the long tube of the 3rd slide. The normal, outer, lower 4th slide will link up with that hoop, and curve upwards to the outer, upper 4th slide that you use when you play. That makes it run up and around and down to the outer 4rh valve knuckle. It removes the weird double loop my 4th valve had in the past, opening up the slide circuit a lot without increasing the bore. (All four pistons on this horn are the same bore.)

Here are some pics to help explain all this.

The short slide legs are not present in this photo. The crook comes directly out of the lower 4th knuckle. Add one inch to the length and you will get the idea. The dogleg will be about 2" shorter, so the 1" slide leg will keep the lower part about like it looks here, and the upper end of the dogleg will be an inch shorter. The long, nickel silver hoop will have to be cut down quite a bit so that it comes within .25" because my smallest removable braces need that much space.


All of this is just friction fit, and all that weight made the rotor push up into the assembly. (It sticks out beyond the bottom of the pistons.) So the knuckles look like they are way too close to the piston casings. They are, but they will be about .25" away when assembled. The brace I had attaching the removable 5th valve/large side MTS tube will be removed, trimmed, and then installed to the shortie slide outer tube, making all that stuff nice and stable. The small side of the MTS will be braced to the 4th slide, so that will be fine, as well.


Goofy photo. Sorry. Everything had shifted around while I was taking the other photos. The shortie slide will be that crook that runs around the 5th valve. The dogleg in the photo looks canted outward. It is. The whole mess is sitting cockeyed in this pic. The dogleg will be about .25" away from the 5th valve tube for the same reason it will be that distance from the 6th branch: that is the gap that my Yamaha braces need. That hoop is there, but the legs are way too long, so the bend is way up high and almost out of the photo.


Here is that long hoop coming down the 3rd valve side. It will be .25" away from the 6th branch, again, due to the braces.


This is the second iteration of the valve section, using brass tubing from Allied Supply. (The valve section as it is today is the 4th iteration.) You can see how different the lower half of the 4th slide was on this horn from 2009 through 2019. It worked well but caused weird balance issues, and it looks like a jungle gym on a playground. What I am doing now ought to be better in both balance and aesthetics. I hope it plays as well or better starting at low F (because the low G on this tuba is amazing).

[the elephant]

I decided to go out to the carport at 5:30, which is beyond stupid if you have lived here for more than 24 hours. An hour before dusk, year-round, the mosquitos come out and try to kill you. So I reek of citronella right now. (At least it is a pleasant scent.)

I worked for a couple of hours with the Dremel and a roll of blue tape, eyeballing a lot of cuts, until I had most of the parts I need for the inner 4th slide. I have not yet assembled them, and can't really clean them up until that is done. I did dress all the ends. The ferrules are stupid-short, but I have done this in the past, and with decent bracing everything will be just fine.

In all, I shortened the dogleg and the ends of the crook, and I cut two inner and outer legs, the two mini-ferrules, and two end rings. For having eyeballed everything it came out pretty nice. ANY mistakes are painfully obvious when the tubes are this short.

I also soldered the new small side outer tube (with end ring) to the 4th piston exit knuckle.

Here is what I got done this evening. Tomorrow I will cut one side of the long hoop to mate up with this assembly. Then I can start installing braces/spacers.


Here are a couple of shots of how things look, now that the crook is a working slide.


Bottom-left of the valve section: notice where the 5th valve section ends, and the dogleg ends to the outside, right next to it. The 6th branch will pass just beneath the leadpipe and curve around the valves as shown in photos in some of my above posts. The hoop will curve right next to it, to the outside. Very tidy looking, I think!

[the elephant]

I wasn't going to include this photo because it is so out of focus. (It's a 2011 iPhone 4S — I'm just happy it still works at this point.)

I posted it because it shows how this all fits together, now. Yes, it fell over to one side a little bit. The crook and all the other parts are cut straight. I will line it all up and solder it together tomorrow.

Goodnight!

[pittbassdaddy]

Just an observation - clearances in the area where the 5th linkage needs to go seem pretty tight.

[the elephant]

I will be using a modified version of the linkage I used for about ten years. I will try to make a much more professional-looking lever, as the one I used was a terrible one that I modified to fit. I will do better this time around. :-)

Thanks for your observations, though. All feedback is appreciated.

This is the situation after I tossed the leadpipe valve and went with the St. Pete rotor. I moved it to the large side of the MTS. Because of space issues, I could not route the 5th slide to the back of the horn, so I flipped the rotor to blow toward the bell. The slide ran right up the center of the bell. It worked well. It also looked terrible. You can see there is a lot of space for the lever and linkage.


This shows the slightly nicer lever I made. That one stayed on the horn for a decade. You can also see the ugly-a$$ed slide on the bell. (And the terrible silver plating that was wearing off all over the place; it was peeling off of the bell in several spots. I very painstakingly sanded all of it off. It took me forever.


Here you can see the old rotor angled upwards toward the bell and its arm, in red. The yellow is where the rotor now lives (turned the other way) and where the arm has to go now. There is plenty of room.

[prairieboy1]

Thank you for your pictures and posts! The valve set looks terrific and you being happy with it is the most important thing. Carry on!

[the elephant]

I fabricated my inner 4th slide circuit today. It looks like a real winner in regards to flow/resistance, aesthetics, and its fitting within the existing space. My erstwhile 4th slide circuit's lower half never looked quite right, and it upset the balance of the tuba on my leg.

The two "corners" of the nickel silver "hoop" will be where two detachable braces will live. There will also be one on each side, connecting the core of the horn at four points. The outer braces will be four large detachable ones in the normal locations one would expect to see. With eight contact points to the bugle, this horn will not have the "squishy" feeling that heavy horns with removable valves can have. It will be just as rigid as a permanently braced horn.

The assemblies are the outer slide leg to the valves, the slide itself, the dogleg with outer slide and ferrule, and the hoop has been cut on the one side and fit to the ferrule. Remember that this design allows me to fully remove the 5th valve and replace it with a length of straight, nickel silver pipe. I will likely play it like that most of the time; I still have to devise a way to work around the thumb lever when the valve is not installed. I will probably just make it easy to remove.

From the front. The bell would be to the upper right.


From the rear, note how the Miraphone hoop does not have the same shape as the Holton 6th branch. Those "corners" will be brace locations. (Bell now to lower right.)


Another angle. (Would this be a tuba version of a classic "Vargas Girl"?)

[bloke]

One serious possible problem that I could see being encountered is that "Holtophone" sounds too much like "Hold the phone"...as that expression has become obsolete.

I hope you parked all that stuff in an interior room...Some more "red" and "purple" b.s. is showing up on the map...

[Tubajug]

Excellent! I have been waiting for you to get back to this project! I'm glad to see it coming together.

Did you say the 5th valve will be removable or just the valveset?