Re-silvering

[York-aholic]

My 712 has had a hard life. It has SDUSD hand scratched into the bell (San Diego Unified School District).

At some point it had the top bow and next two smaller bows cut in half for dent repair. I had the top and smaller bottom bow brazed. I sleeved the smaller top bow with a piece of small York Eb top bow.

During past repairs the area around where the top bow was cut and now brazed has had the silver plate buffed back quite a ways. While worn silver plate where your had goes looks “lived in”, this spot of bare brass screamed out “hacked on”.

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Figuring the old girl was never going to be a runway model, I decided to try something I didn’t think would work.

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It worked better than expected. It’s far from perfect (it would stick out like a sore thumb if it was), and certainly must be ultra thin and wouldn’t stand up to any wear (but my hand doesn’t rest there anyway).

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After filing then very fine grit sanding the brazed repair, I floated it with soft solder (a bit like mudding drywall). Quite predictably, the “silver plate” didn’t adhere to the solder. Oh well.

The front of the top bow had as much bare brass showing. From 6 feet away and zooming in, she looks semi-respectable, rather than a junk yard dog.

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She plays pretty good too. If I showed up with a horn that looked like a runway model, people would expect me to play well. With this girl accompanying me, people are pleasantly surprised with my mediocre playing.

[bloke]

Question:
Are the bows for the tall models much different from those for the short models?

[York-aholic]

Question:
Are the bows for the tall models much different from those for the short models?

Yep, quite different. The tapers and bends are similar but the ferrules are in different spots on the horn. A little higher or lower for each one.

I already tried that route. Heck, I even tried it with a top action 700. The top action and side action also gave ferrules in different spots as well as the smaller top bow going along side the top bow rather than under it as on the front action.

Good idea though.

Granted, she’s not the best looking horn up close but I’ll take a horn that plays well and is a 10 yarder. I really enjoy playing this one. A bit like you sitting down to play music/songs with your 98. Quite satisfying.

[bloke]

OK cool.
Failing to let this go, how about King bows, as far as their dimensions and starting and stopping places?
I understand avoiding de-Yorking part of the instrument, but if King bows happen to be really similar, those bugles are known to offer superb information… and sure: the York connectors should be retained - if King bows are close to interchangeable.

bloke “posting out of ignorance“

[the elephant]

I have used that "polish" (actually a different brand, but essentially the same stuff) since late 2005. It works great, but it is so thin that it comes off EVEN IF YOU DO NOT TOUCH IT. It sort of thins out or evaporates over the course of a month. It deposits silver onto the base metal (but not to lead, as you have discovered) until the metal is covered. That means approximately a layer that is only a few molecules thick, more or less; the silver component, while actual silver, disappears if you breathe on it.

My Holton is now free of the awful, patchy, burnt-up, peeling silver plating that was coming off the horn in many places. However, the bell flare at the engraving is very thin and has some tendency to re-crinkle due to some apparently severe damage from before I owned it. I did not want to thin that area any more than I had to by sanding the silver off of the inside of the bell, too. So I left the silver in place on the bell interior.

That silver was not in very good condition, either. So for concerts when I decide to polish up the raw brass I will wipe down the inside of the bell with this stuff and it looks brand new for a few weeks. It works great if that is all you expect from it. Anything more than that will lead to disappointment.

Here is what the bugle of my Holton 345 looks like when I polish it with Simichrome and use the silver-bearing polish inside the bell…

[the elephant]

Failing to let this go…

I agree about the King parts. The bell is sort of meh, but using King's outer and inner branches with a York bell seems to offer a *very* nice tuba (of that type) that plays very well. I am not suggesting they be swapped in on THIS tuba — I'm just agreeing with Joe on the physical and musical qualities of these parts.

[bloke]

I’m thinking that Wade has no intention of re-plating m his big Holton, but I have had good success with having Anderson copper plate about a 1000th of an inch on both sides of a bell.
net two 1000ths added thickness - Perhaps 8% to 10%…(??)
The engraving was still distinct, and this added strength - simply making it thicker, and the subsequent silver plating hid it from view.

Jason, you might consider pulling those two bows off and sending them to Anderson. It really doesn’t cost all that much to plate those two bows…and then you could stick them back on the instrument.
I realize you still wouldn’t have a perfect finish by any means, but what they would do would hold up.

back to Wade:
A silver plated bugle - bolted to a lacquered brass and nickel silver valveset - might look really cool…and lacquering only the valveset is very manageable without any fancy booth, etc., etc.
If you polished up that bugle nicely and cleaned it so that it was ready to plate, I could imagine you driving all night, having them plate it on a prearranged day, sleeping out in their parking lot in your car, and driving home with it, at the end of the day. Old instruments tend to blush out plating solution via microscopic little caverns in the brass (resulting in unsightly little white clouds and crusty spots), but you can easily address those with silver polish when you get home… You might have to “chase” them for two or three weeks…very easily manageable.

[the elephant]

Nah, I am finally "over" silver plating. I will be trying to lacquer the bugle myself, though. I used to be quite good (and fast/efficient) at full relacquering jobs back in the 1990s when I had the nice downdraft booth to work in. (I never did full tubas, but did a lot of sousaphone bells by themselves.)

I have to buy a used spray rig and practice a LOT before I try to apply anything to my horns, though, as I have not done this since about 2001 or 2002. One of the reasons I wanted detachable valve sets was to make polishing easier. If I lacquer all my slides, the separate 5th valve unit, the leadpipe (everything that comes off the horn, essentially), and the bugle, the only stuff left would be the piston set and slides, and very little of all that is brass, so I would just leave it alone and keep the nickel silver shined up some. This would allow me to continue to screw around with the valve section since I cannot seem to leave well enough alone, heh, heh…

I want to do the Kurath first, but beforehand I need to decide that NO MORE WORK will be done to either bugle. I am not yet at that point, but I think I can do this in the fall when the humidity drops below the constant 85% we suffer from down here. I will be picking up a used spray rig this summer and then wasting a lot of lacquer and the other ingredients (and maybe some dyes and such, too) until I feel confident to use the spray rig on some small stuff, like slide crooks. Then the bugles will be easy. (Easy for me — I have more difficulty with the insides/backsides of valve sections than with large surfaces like French horn or mellophone bells.)

Anyway, regarding the topic of this thread, I like this stuff so long as I do not try to ascribe characteristics to it that are in my head. It is what it is. You will have to reapply it frequently. It is not cheap. If he has the wherewithal to have all that work done to it I would get the parts related.

I would do this to my bell, but it is nigh on impossible to remove and resolder due to some idiosyncracies created by Mr. Rusk. (read: no damned way is that bell coming off again!) I would consider driving up to have this done, but they do not know me at all, so I would have to live in a hotel for a couple of weeks as my horn slowly worked its way through the line of work. (I would never ask them to bump my thing up because I was a waiter, and I would never have the needed funds to drive up there twice. Besides, I could never leave it in the hands of someone I did not know very well. This is why I started repair work in the first place: I detest having anyone ever touch my horns. I simply do not trust people, after several spectacularly bad incidents with people I trusted (including one repairman).

[bloke]

Yeah… I understood all that. The only plus for silver plating the bugle would be to add a couple thousands thickness to the bell only, and then – once the bell would be reinstalled on the bugle – add yet another thousandth of silver – for a good strong bell pancake area (as you report a little bit of an issue, there).
This suggestion was to only promote integrity and not really for any consideration of appearance (though it would rock)… it’s just that if (??) you employed copperplating to promote bell flare integrity, you would probably want to cover it up with silver.

As far as Anderson is concerned, I have made appointments with them to do tubas a couple of months out, and showed up on a certain day.
They no longer offer glass bead blasting, and that’s the main thing that made plating a tuba take more than one day. The reason they wanted to hold onto my 186 (that Bill now has) for a couple of days AFTER it was plated, was to put it in a heater to evaporate any remaining plating solution out from under that kranz.

If your bell needs to stay on the bottom bow, you could also consider just having them copper plate the bell and and bottom bow together - or the entire friggin bugle. Holton was notorious for sanding the $h!t out of those TOP bows, so it could probably use some copper thickness as well.

[the elephant]

I don't want to buff the ring at the level of the engraving ever again. It is too thin, so buffing it out in preparation for lacquering or plating would be a no-no unless the who bugle was heavily strike-plated in copper first, and then the engraving would have to be retraced as it is sort of faint right now. (I do care about the engraving but am not married to having it visible. If it ended up being covered up that would not break my wee, little heart one bit. Well, maybe *(one* bit, but that is all.)

I would do this if I had the money for the work and all of the expenses of the trip and a window in my work that would allow it AND had a second vehicle for my wife to use while I was out of state. (I'm working on that right now, though.) Perhaps a new plating job could happen, but I am not sure how to pack the buffed bugle properly for the drive up to Anderson. I used to pack stuff like this wrapper in white, single-nap flannel, then a big, black yard bag over each end, taped off really well, then a ton of bubble wrap, in a box of packing peanuts where the tuba never comes within about a foot from any point of the container. Of course, I had a shipping department to steal this stuff from, and their help in packing. I would have to do this myself now. I am assuming I would still wrap it in flannel and trash bags, then put it in the gig bag and into the back seat for the drive up? Sound safe/sane? How do you transport your freshly buffed and degreased tubas up to Anderson?

I am sorry, York-aholic, that your thread has become so thoroughly highjacked…

[bloke]

Jason is fine.
I'm still wondering if we can find him some nicer bows for that really nice-playing instrument.

The beauty of the "maybe, someday" thing on your big Holton (if you trace my suggested route), is the fact that you've made the instrument modular, when (again) means that "someday" can be "whenever you might be ready".

thin area:
I would probably not worry about polishing that area at all - prior to any possible copper plating, as long as it's tarnish-free.
...and I wonder if Sherry might re-trace your engraving, on your way home...

something that could work out advantageously:
Plating is electronic and magnetic. It's attracted to "poles" (ends of objects) more than to central areas. The area near the bell rim is a polar area.

[the elephant]

… Sherry…

Is she at Anderson, or somewhere on the route home? I remember you recommending her, but not where she works.

Plating is electronic and magnetic. It's attracted to "poles" (ends of objects) more than to central areas. The area near the bell rim is a polar area.

So is my huge bum.

[bloke]

… Sherry…

Is she at Anderson, or somewhere on the route home? I remember you recommending her, but not where she works.

Plating is electronic and magnetic. It's attracted to "poles" (ends of objects) more than to central areas. The area near the bell rim is a polar area.

So is my huge bum.

Sherry Huntley lives in the Elkhart area. She claims that she's retired, but can occasionally be coaxed into doing a job.
Your "Holton" thing isn't that intricate, and - per the previously outlined order of events - she wouldn't have to unpack, repack, or ship (often the worst part of a tuba "thing"). More than a few people seem to like "easy" and "cash".

[the elephant]

Thanks for adding to my never-ending list of sh¡t to consider spending money on, heh, heh…

[bloke]

Where is the care emoji, when I really need it?

[the elephant]

[York-aholic]

Nice idea about King bows, but nope to the upper bows.

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@Matt Walters once suggested to me to put the bell on an older but nice shape silver King 2341 (old, detachable bell style) and that it would sound remarkably similar to what it did coming from the York factory.

@the elephant no worries about taking thread in other directions. It’s quite a bit more interesting now.

I’d thought quite seriously about sending the offending bows to Dan Oberloh for repeated layers of copper and smoothing until things were ready for a coat of silver. More than the money aspect was that I didn’t want to be without the horn that long.

I was/am fine with it’s appearance as it was but thought I’d see what happened when it was more grey/silver up top. I like it. Even if I have to reapply every month or so, it’s fine for what I do (groups I play with).

Or I can spend the money and buy a nice condition 716 I’ve been eyeing…

[bloke]

I love Dan (though misguided in his socio-economic views). He's a true prince, and a talent...
...but don't spend any read money on those two p.o.s.

I suspect you'll eventually stumble across a TALL model with a TRASHED bell and MISSING pistons.

If I see one, I'll either snag it for you, or send you a link.

Lord knows, I owe you...

[York-aholic]

An extra set of eyes would definitely be welcomed.

Those bows are particular to the front action models.



However, you don’t owe me anything.

[bloke]

An extra set of eyes would definitely be welcomed.

Those bows are particular to the front action models.



However, you don’t owe me anything.

Send me their ends' o.d.'s, the interior spacing at the LOWEST point (where the higher of the two sides begins), and the overall height (lowest side to outside apex).

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