King 2-Valved GG Contra —> 5-Valved CC Tuba

[the elephant]

Version 1 — Rotors are clear, despite what the camera angle says. WIN!


Version 2 — No access to rotors! FAIL!


Version 1 — Yea!


Version 2 — Boooo…

[the elephant]

OH, DAMNDAMNDAMNDAMMIT!!!

DO NOT PICK UP WITH BARE HANDS THE THINGS THAT YOU *JUST* TORCHED!

AAAAAUUUUGGGGHHHH!!! SEARING FLESH!!!!

Man, that really hurt…

[Grumpikins]

Yikes! Burns are the worst. Take it easy.

Sent from my SM-J327VPP using Tapatalk

[the elephant]

Almost no dent work is needed on the older '81 contra's parts. The plating on the '89 is very good, but it has hundreds of pings, dings, and ripples from previous work. I am glad that the old parts will need no major work. Screw the silver plating.

This horn was played by kids who drank a lot of cokes during rehearsal breaks, and it was never chem cleaned. The inside has a THICK wall of sugar-based fluorescent white/green crap. These parts had to sit in the vinegar tank for an hour, and the crap that came out on the brushes was black for a while, and then brown.





An interesting scale reference: my Holton 345, the Holton "Monster" Eb I used to own, and this King K-90…

[the elephant]

She's all taken apart and prepped. Tomorrow I'll use the (inaccurately named) "dent machine" to iron out all the woobies. There is only a small amount of actual dent work to do and most of it can be done with magnets. funny, I recall learning to use the neodymium magnets to avoid disassembly, and here I am, fully disassembling a horn and then using magnets. Go figure…





The smaller ferrule is a reminder of what this horn looked like yesterday. It will be much easier to see what I am doing with the old Z-60 tomorrow with stuff cleaned up to this extent.


The top bow needs to come off, too. I was pretty sure I could do what needs to be done with those two parts connected, but discovered that it will be more involved. Also, the guard wire is smashed almost flat in spots and I hate fixing those things, so I will swipe one of the straight ones from the body. (Depending on the year they were made, these had two or three guard wires running parallel down the side of the horn to act as a sort of reinforcement from your shoulder, as these would be slammed pretty hard to the horns-up position — so I have an extra at hand.)

Unfortunately, some yahoo repair tech decided that the bottom bow cap needed to have no air gap (a sort of natural "crumple zone" if you will) and hammered the guard flat, and then FILLED the gap with solder. The bottom bow is not large, but with that in place, it weighs over two pounds! And even with a big-ass 4mm torch tip and tons of heat, it will NOT come off. Even the edges are stuck down. It is like it was brazed in place. Not sure what I will do about that, but I'll think about it for a while, I guess.

[the elephant]

My spell checkers do not understand that the word "yahoo" is a noun or an exclamation and not *just* the name of a company. They hate me because I refuse to capitalize the word "yahoo" when not speaking about the corporation.

yahoo

yahoo yahoo yahoo

Up yours, AutoCorrect. Up yours, too, Grammarly.

[the elephant]

Time for a placeholding bump so I can start adding to this thread. I am back on this project.

[tclements]

WOW! Once you get this (almost) done, I want to give it a honk!!!

[bort2.0]

@the elephant -- Wade, I'm really glad you're back and posting here again. I knew I missed your posts, but didn't realize how much. Thanks for spending the time to share it all, there's a lot of us who read it!

PS -- glad you didn't die from COVID. (and know that I mean that in the most dark-humor way possible) I had a pretty decent case of it a few years ago... I knew I would.get through it, but I'm not sure I've ever been more sick in my life. The concert I played 4 weeks later was the first and only time I've been fully winded from playing the tuba. It sucked! Ironically, playing a Rudy 5/4 saved my butt. It took my breath away and left me gasping, but that tuba was like "let me take it from here" and took garbage in and made it sound good. I hope you have no such trouble or anything when you're back in action. Which you might already be. Stay well, Wade!

[the elephant]

This thing is not cooperating at all. I need to box it up and set it aside for now. I have to prep and sell my Holton and Kurath, so this one, while being worked on, is not being worked on all that much.