“Hey bloke,
I heard that you might straighten out my beat-up 24 inch detachable Conn 25J bell. strip it, polish it, and relacquer it.”
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“You heard wrong.”
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“…and bloke, I also heard that you were looking for a set of _______ , a ________ , and a _______ . I have all of those.”
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“When are you bringing the 25J bell over?”
Last edited by bloke on Wed Apr 06, 2022 12:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
It was actually sprinkling when I was spraying lacquer.
I shot the outside of the bell, which promptly turned white.
I poured my mix out of the aluminum Binks spray cup into a small glass pickle jar, dumped 100% drying retarder into the gun, hit it again, and it was restored to clear.
I added some of that drying retarder to my mix, poured the rest of that drying retarder back into its can, and shot the inside of the bell.
It turned out fine - no dust, no runs. Though very smooth and shiny, this bell is not elegant...I didn't buff out any scratches, as the bell had already been refinished once, the scratches were epic (surely, it's "efficiently-flattened" pancake was routinely pounded against the concrete at some past school), and - without any refinishing - those bells - arguably - are "just" thick enough (in order to not have to be super careful with them). I tend to believe that the old 1930's-40's 38K and 1950's 20K sousaphone bells were one gauge thicker that these 25J bells.
I also removed quite a few epic dents from the body (ONLY with magnets), and discovered that the replacement mouthpipe tube was never completely soldered to the receiver (fffffffffft). Actually a friend who was helping me (helping a LOT) discovered that.
A good bit of the oem (probably: 60-year-old) brittle lacquer chipped off the repaired areas, so I shined those up and hit them with clear.
The body subsequently looks "patchy", but no longer looks "beat up".
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