Leaving your tuba in a hot car

[RenoDoc]

With much of the US of A in a heat wave right now, I gotta ask a practical question: Is there any harm in leaving your tuba in a hot car during the day? I did this a couple of weeks ago and it was the first time I had to "cool down" my instrument to start playing in rehearsal

[Mark]

The bigger harm is leaving a tuba in the car at all. Theft from cars is totally out of control.

[bloke]

theft:
If the low brass and non-kook strings contingency go out for dinner (between dress and show during a pops weekend) I choose the restaurant (texting) by "where there's a parking place right by the front door into which bloke can back his car"...
...and hell no, I'm not leaving my instruments at the hall.

heat:
Since I have forsaken bags in favor of cases, I like to avoid heating up the car, as glue cements the foam rubber and plush lining to the cases' shell interiors.

[Doc]

With much of the US of A in a heat wave right now…

Texans: You mean “summer?”

[bloke]

With much of the US of A in a heat wave right now…

Texans: You mean “summer?”

Average high temps in your part of TX in "the dead of winter" are 65 - 75 F...so when is it NOT summer?

[Doc]

With much of the US of A in a heat wave right now…

Texans: You mean “summer?”

Average high temps in your part of TX in "the dead of winter" are 65 - 75 F...so when is it NOT summer?

It’s all relative. Sometimes like a bad, stinky, unwanted relative.

[kingrob76]

With much of the US of A in a heat wave right now, I gotta ask a practical question: Is there any harm in leaving your tuba in a hot car during the day? I did this a couple of weeks ago and it was the first time I had to "cool down" my instrument to start playing in rehearsal

My experience is that lubricants suffer most, and the horn will play sharp until it reaches the "new" room temperature.

[bloke]

Texans: You mean “summer?”

Average high temps in your part of TX in "the dead of winter" are 65 - 75 F...so when is it NOT summer?

It’s all relative. Sometimes like a bad, stinky, unwanted relative.

I'm thinking I might like two properties - both of which were easy to board up for a season...
- a nice comfortable cabin on the Wisconsin shore of Lake Michigan (perhaps a few miles north of Sheboygan) for summer, and another place (somewhere near Doc. ...maybe Birch Creek Forest) on Somerville Lake - for winter.

Here's a nice one (for the summer) in Newton, Wis...right on the Lake...



This south Texas cabin might be an interesting place for the winter...

[Doc]

Lake Somerville would be a fine place to spend the winter. I spent many, many weekends camping and fishing there as a kid and young adult.

[matt g]

With much of the US of A in a heat wave right now, I gotta ask a practical question: Is there any harm in leaving your tuba in a hot car during the day? I did this a couple of weeks ago and it was the first time I had to "cool down" my instrument to start playing in rehearsal

My experience is that lubricants suffer most, and the horn will play sharp until it reaches the "new" room temperature.

This is pretty much what happens.

[bloke]

As far as part of the reason I use lamp oil to lubricate instruments is because it evaporates and I have to put it in each time I play. I don't have to worry about whether it's there or not. I know it isn't, and I don't have to worry about build up, because it evaporates and there's nothing left.

[UncleBeer]

With much of the US of A in a heat wave right now, I gotta ask a practical question: Is there any harm in leaving your tuba in a hot car during the day? I did this a couple of weeks ago and it was the first time I had to "cool down" my instrument to start playing in rehearsal

My experience is that lubricants suffer most, and the horn will play sharp until it reaches the "new" room temperature.

This is pretty much what happens.

For every 1 degree change centigrade (higher or lower), the pitch on a tuba changes 3 to 3.5 cents. That's significant.

[UncleBeer]

As far as part of the reason I use lamp oil to lubricate instruments is because it evaporates and I have to put it in each time I play. I don't have to worry about whether it's there or not. I know it isn't, and I don't have to worry about build up, because it evaporates and there's nothing left.

Not to bicker with bloke or anything, but it seems to me that the only substance where that would be true (leaving absolutely no residue) would be pure, distilled water. No?

[bloke]

Yeah you're right. That was an exaggeration, but I just don't experience any of this gumming stuff that other people complain about. Not at all.

It is highly evaporative. It's the same stuff that we use around this house in old-fashioned oil lamps when there are power outages... odorless in the instrument, odorless when burning, and no smoke.

If some of it spills on music or on other surfaces, I'll come back later and there's nothing there. The same thing recently when a whole bunch of it spilled out of a little container with an ill fitting lid inside one of my hard cases.

Is there a residue where those bottles spilled? I'm sure there's something, but it sure ain't much.

There were so many loud kabooms ( lightning and thunder) last night around here that I thought I'd be pulling those lamps out and lighting them up... reports of widespread flooding over in Memphis, because it's a tradition over there for citizens to not keep their storm drains cleaned out.

[Rick Denney]

Lake Somerville would be a fine place to spend the winter. I spent many, many weekends camping and fishing there as a kid and young adult.

Me, too. Boy Scout trips, water skiing in college using my ca. 1954 Helton (made in Houston) formed plywood speedboat (RIP), cookouts in the state park with cycling team buddies, five miles from my best friend’s family’s hobby farm near Brenham, and half an hour from College Station (at least the way I foolishly drove in those days). Too small to attract tea-sips who’d rather kill themselves on Lake Austin, and too far from Houston to be too badly overrun on weekends. Good fishing for crappie back in the day, not that I was ever patient enough to be a successful fisherman.

I remember a scouting trip from when I was maybe 10 or 11. It was winter and freezing cold. We sat around the boat stalls in the marina and fished. The residents wore plastic bread bags over their shoes to keep their feet dry. It wasn’t always warm in the winter!

Rick “not quite old enough to predate the construction of that little reservoir” Denney

[peterbas]

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[bloke]

As far as part of the reason I use lamp oil to lubricate instruments is because it evaporates and I have to put it in each time I play. I don't have to worry about whether it's there or not. I know it isn't, and I don't have to worry about build up, because it evaporates and there's nothing left.

Same thing is used for making the white smoke traces on airplanes.
So if white smoke is coming out of the bell, you're not only on fire but flying too.

yeah...That's it...

...but I always though it was purple smoke, when that oil was in a lamp...(??)

[Doc]

I prefer lamps with pink smoke…

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[Jperry1466]

I prefer lamps with pink smoke…

As beautiful and sexy as she is/was, I can never look at her pictures the same way after realizing that she is 1 year younger than my late mother, also very pretty, who would be 92 now.

[Mary Ann]

Don't these TV and movie people understand they are supposed to stay exactly the same age they are on screen? Sheesh.

The evaporation is exactly why I don't use lamp oil on my valves. PITA to have to oil them every freaking time you play instead of once a week or two.