"emergency" sousaphones

[bloke]

With the economy the way it is, young people are opting out of the job market, and doing the school-y thing...so a nearby university band is deluged with young scholar volunteers. They have a buttload of sousaphones, but not 1.5 buttloads, so bloke (their fixit grunt/hostler) has been called on.

None of you were interested in my 1947/1960-bell silver King sousaphone, so they're buying that (at TF asking price), and (yet another) I'm pulling a Conn 14K/Pan American out of my (well, speaking of buttloads... ). It will be mostly silver, some metallic silver rattle can, some "Pan American", some 14K, and some 36K (all compatible).

Here's the most time-consuming part (below) done. I'm determined to finish this bastard in 1.5 days or less.
The silver body elbow was loaded with cracks, so I had to go up into the loft and find a (lacquer) 14K body elbow...filling cracks is too damn tedious, and it's right where they smack these things (over-and-over) against the bleachers (when the carelessly set them back down at games).

Universities need their stuff (August band camps) AFTER all the high schools need theirs, but - if I don't get these two "selling-to-them" sousas slicked out and delivered (like: NOW) there's NO WAY I'll get them done in time (LATER) for their August band camp (in addition to the energy required to do a supersonic-speed sousaphone overhaul...and I'm - well... - old).

Right now, I'm in for lunch, and deciding on whether the bell is next or the rest of the body branches are next.

(The valve section is raw-brass/no-dents/Secrist-valves off a 36K...I even put an upper #1 slide on it...but never used it for anything...This silver Pan American body/bell was tossed by a local high school - actually in the middle school's junk pile, with no valve section). It had a heavy coat of blue paint on the entire instrument with a heavy coat of white paint (probably to match fiberglass sousas) underneath the blue. ...stripping off all that paint...?? yeah: funzie-gamesie.
...and (of course) this blue-over-white-over-silver-over-brass first branch had the typical 2-inch-deep crunches in it (and - of course - right on the rib).

[MiBrassFS]

I’m sure it will turn out great.

Regarding school enrollments… around here the schools are lamenting the lack of applicants and are trying to figure out how to entice HS grads into going to school… or so says the local tv news.

[bloke]

Typically when the economy has been bad (me: old, and having seen a pattern), I've seen young people (diligent scholars every one, I'm certain) hide out in "academia" and mess around in not-particularly-challenging disciplines (sociology, music ed, art history, English lit, etc.) until things got better out in the real world...not quite clever enough to enter trade school, but whatev'

[MiBrassFS]

Me: not much younger than you have seen the same patterns.

Seems like around here due to the “curriculums” in public schools, some have been scared off of college and into other options or no options at all. However, pattern may have shifted a bit. We have a lot of trade schools and community colleges here teaching trades (and a lot jobs in trades). Their enrollments are up. We’ll see if it lasts. Like you said, “whatev…” I’ve, being old-ish, have aged out of such activities.

I did university. I did trade school. Guess which earned me more…

[bloke]

I made it to the 2nd branch...
remaining (dent-removal-wise) are the 4th branch and the bell...(insert exhausted-person-sounding breathing noises here).

This 2nd branch ("bottom bow" of the sousaphone) was a bit more difficult because I didn't want to remove the guard wire (which was smushed in two areas) and also "back then" Conn made the bottom bows out of thicker metal (more likely to be abused)...I'm thinking this bottom bow might be a full 1/32" thick (whew..."stubborn" dents), but it now looks great...

The thickness may (??) be why when someone's daddy WELDED it back together (yes: STEEL) they didn't burn through the brass (see below).

[York-aholic]

Wait? You mean I can mig weld on my tubas?

If only I’d have know this 10 years ago!

[bloke]

The 5th branch was repairable, but this one off a 1960's 22K (from the attic was more easily repaired, so here's one more part that will receive rattle-can silver paint.

After dinner (I just stopped at 8:30 P.M. to eat) I might go out and finish the ("Pan American") bell.

That would mean that all dents would be removed, and tomorrow would be stick-together (ie. completed) day, as planned.






...and - having worked on mostly beat-up (now not-beat-up) silver plated parts today, you might now sympathize with yet another reason why I tend to turn up my nose at silver plated tubas...




college enrollment situation:
USA job openings are at the lowest since February 2021, and that number has fallen 33% over the past two years.
BLS: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.t01.htm

[MiBrassFS]

Jobs still ok here. This area wags a bit differently. Still a lot of manufacturing and all that supports it.

That steel patch crazy. I have seen someone use hard silver solder to work with steel. They were fixing a chair!

[gocsick]

I have seen someone use hard silver solder to work with steel. They were fixing a chair!

Metallurgically that is ok. It won't firm any intermetallics or wierd corrosion couples. Not the strongest repair though. Farmers used to silver solder all kinds of stuff for a quick repair, a lot easier than torch welding.

[MiBrassFS]

I don’t know all the little smilie dudes, so I don’t really know what a dude eating popcorn(?) means. Seems like people want to use them with at least two meanings, so that doesn’t clarify much to me. I usually avoid using them. No criticism of anyone who does. But…

He was an old school Minnesota farmer. His family business was also digging wells. All sorts of tricks in his bag. Pretty cool guy!

I hate texting. I don’t have any social media presence. And stay off my lawn!!! Ha!

[bloke]

The smiley eating popcorn indicates two people talking to each other who are entertaining to another person. It might be something interesting or they might be arguing or conversing in most any sort of way. We are certainly not arguing. Some parts of the country and some cities are suffering from local and national policies more and some less. Even others aren't suffering from them at all. Some are suffering due to their own policies, such as the encouragement of local gang activity, or even basically allowing the local gangsters to run their cities while paying off the politicians to turn their backs, or even the politicians themselves basically being gangsters, while throwing draconian tax and fee increases at the populace. Areas that maybe doing quite well possibly haven't yet been flooded with tens or hundreds of thousands of jobless and skillless people brought in from other lands, in addition to not allowing the proliferation of gang crime, or it is often the case that people who are doing well in an area where there is a lot of gang crime, people from other lands parked there and other serious problems, yet they themselves are doing well view the general welfare of the area as being good. (When I talk to [some] people in a population center that's close by who are employed and receiving paychecks and paying their bills and even have some savings, this is the sort of reports I received from them, because they only go to their homes and to their jobs. Typical out of their mouths is "All of these problems over here are greatly exaggerated"...etc. Other people - who are more realistic and embrace reality - tell me that they can't wait to retire and move away, etc.) I live only about fifty minutes away from the most chaotic areas of a crumbling city, but only see about it on TV, because even though I do some business there I know to do it very quickly and get back out, and that even pertains to rehearsals and performances over there. Actually I do see more of it than just the very short times when I move into pick up and deliver things or play gigs, because people are moving out here in droves, and there's about triple the traffic out here than there was when I first moved out here. The only things that are slowing down the urban refugees moving out here are the facts that there are no houses for them, there's no infrastructure for them, and that the (public) schools out here are terrible (though with their being two 12 grade reasonably-priced private schools and a very large homeschooling contingency). I'm quite fine with all three of those those things being deterrents, but yet it's not seeming to deter as many people as it used to, as the situation over there in the population center is so very dire... with daily multiple murders and dozens of daily gun discharges not only in the city itself but in the so-called nice suburbs of it.. and the area is not even a million people. It's only hundreds of thousands, so that's a tremendous amount of violent crime, not to mention all the property crime.

I'm eager to solder this body together today and hopefully finish it and take a look back at the King. I'll probably snap pictures. I don't remember buying the King, but we must have bought it shortly after we moved in here, so I bet we bought it around fifteen years ago and I just tossed it in the attic. The other one - I think I may have said earlier in the thread - was a white painted and then later blue painted silver body and bell with no valve section in the junk room of a middle school in over in this county, and the band director asked me if I wanted it before he tossed it. A 14k and a Pan American are the same model made by Conn, and this instrument will feature silver Pan American parts, lacquered 14k parts, the lacquer 22k 5th branch, and a 36k valve section. I think the lower mouthpipe tube that I found might be off of a 38k or maybe a 32k or something like that.

[MiBrassFS]

Thanks for that, Joe! Seriously. I just spent 10 minutes looking without a real answer!

As far argument goes, none whatsoever. I consider Joe a friend and I hope he feels the same.

This is a unique area. Surprisingly on the rise, but I’ll venture a guess that most here are waiting for the ever occurring disappointment/disaster (corruption, etc.). Hopefully it won’t happen or at least not happen for a while longer…

[bloke]

I was editing as you read, I tend to voice text, and then go back and fix all the goofy AI miscalculations that voice texting leaves behind.

[MiBrassFS]

You dang kids and your AI… now, where’s my Smith Corona…

Anyway, I’m sure these will turn out dandy.

Edit: Here’s a good one. Just in… Rumor has it that there is a 40 million dollar embezzlement situation going in the “Waterfront Conservancy” (an effort to clean up a riverfront that has historically been trashed by industry). It won’t have any real effect on Industry, but there it is. Just a culture of corruption.

[bloke]

Whether it's local or state or national, that's why a bunch of us don't much care for government, and prefer that it stays small. If government is small, it doesn't have money to pay off newspapers to print lies, and people can boycott corporations and local businesses that do things unsavory such as fascist types of buddy-buddy behavior between government and businesses) order to control their behavior...
...but there's no real hope of that, and that's why I live out in the country in a really big county with a really small population and really low taxation levels.

[gocsick]

I don’t know all the little smilie dudes, so I don’t really know what a dude eating popcorn(?) means. Seems like people want to use them with at least two meanings, so that doesn’t clarify much to me. I usually avoid using them. No criticism of anyone who does. But…

I have fat fingers and accidentally pressed the popcorn button when I meant to hit the quotation marks!

[bloke]

Mrs bloke went shopping from about 10:00 until noon, so I mowed a pretty good size patch while waiting for her to come back. It's much easier to stick sousaphones back together if there's some money near to sit with you and hold pieces.

I was so tired last night that I didn't even bathe, and took advantage of my filth to do the mowing. Now I'm hot bath treated, lunched, and ready to sousaphone build.

[MiBrassFS]

I’m just over the border into a much lower tax county. Unfortunately, where there’s people, there’s corruption. I have no illusions that it’s not here, too, despite the tax rates. Deep pockets always get what they want.

[bloke]

I’m just over the border into a much lower tax county. Unfortunately, where there’s people, there’s corruption. I have no illusions that it’s not here, too, despite the tax rates. Deep pockets always get what they want.

Our largest town has had two or three crooked mayors in a row (as most elected officials possess criminal minds), but they were all caught, arrested, jailed, and the stuff they stole was recovered.

We didn't get started until around 1:30 (Mrs. bloke went shopping, so I mowed for a while), and got this far by 3:30 or so.

I'm going to do the lower mouthpipe mounting, make sure all the valves and slides are fine, and then mount the valve section and 5th branch.

...so (hopefully) this will be a 1.5 day no-dents (previously EPIC dents) sousaphone with Secrist pistons...and yeah: some rattle-can silver paint here-and-there.

body elbow big brace: forgot about that, but (luckily) found one...


Curvatures (on severely dented sousaphone bows) tend to become warped, when repaired. I tend to start reassembling at a goofy/awkward place, and "coax" the body branches so as the braces line up at their original footprints (which encourages the resultant instrument to actually look like a sousaphone).
EVEN the 1st branch can be coaxed to it's original location, and - if the person reassembling a sousaphone BEGINS with the first branch, that's really not (at least, not in my opinion) a good place to start.

[bloke]

' gotta love the vintage cast braces, and the ladies who sat at those stamping machines and (just as with woodwind keys) made them.
Those ladies (OSHA) actually had a small/strong chain attached to their wrists to pull their hand out of the way of the stamping machine - just in case they themselves did not pull their hand out of the way...and (yes) it could be be unhooked, in case of some other type of emergency...
...and yes: ear protection as well.

Have I hoarded these braces for rare uses?
Hell yes, I have.

I'm I willing to sell any of them?
Hell no, I am not.

I found that I had ONE decent Conn receiver (I'm sure the lower mouthpipe that I found is off an old worn-valve-casings 38K valve section...It's fancy: with a rib on it, and the fancy ferrule at the bottom), but - well... - that neck receiver only rated "decent"', so I went ahead and made one.
(for y'all's misc. knowledge: It's Olds model O-99 tuba outside valve-slide tubing... c. .7" i.d.)

...Some will remember a discussion with someone else (here on TubaForum) re: the salient features of vintage cast braces vs. the gotta-make-everything-cheaper-and-easier-to-stick-together "arch" braces.
arch braces: easier to make and easier to install
cast braces: better and elegant

NONE of the lower mouthpipe stuff was mounted on this valve section, prior to today...and it WAS a scavenger hunt...
...and I DID manage to find (just) THREE 14K/36K finger buttons WITHOUT digging into my cool/vintage Conn finger buttons.

(The 5th branch is NOT soldered in place, but I stuck it there to make certain that it would clear the lower mouthpipe.)

...I never put guides on these Secrist-rebuilt pistons, so I gotta.
All of the slides work just fine.
It's still looking hopeful for today.