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If you’re ever in a situation where the rim is like that and you have no choices readily at hand, clear nail polish can offer temporary protection from the exposed brass.

I don't think the fact that my body isn't good at getting rid of toxins is decreasing my lifespan very much....but it sure is making the end of that lifespan miserable. And I know SO many people in the same boat. Probably the only reason I'm still here is the incredible extent I go to, to keep from getting more crap in me and to get rid of the crap I have. Some who come in with what I call "good genetics" don't reach their tipping point nearly as soon as I did, and they don't have to suffer the misery until later in life. Modern medicine is good at a couple of things.....fixing when we actually break ourselves, and killing pathogens. But it is blind to illness caused by toxins and there are thousands upon thousands living with conditions that can't be fixed with either of these approaches. Sanitation has made a huge difference too.....but look at the incredible number of cancer cases out there. For a large number of cancers, the Gerson therapy is curative, and all it does is clear toxins. There are some it can't cure but it can and has cured, for example, stage 4 pancreatic cancer. But...it cannot be practiced in the US because our culture does not accept it, we having been enculturated with the concept that drugs and surgery are the answer. If I had only done what the allopaths said, I would not be here.

For me old-fashioned salve of cod-liver oil on the "injured" area before and after playing works well.
Hubert

bloke wrote:I'm not responding to BobEuph in this post...Feel free to contact me and chat as you've done before...
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It occurred to me that someone might ask,

"Why not titanium-coat brass rims?"

In my experience, coating a really soft material with a really hard one doesn't work out very well.

Think of those "axial flow" trombone F-attachment valves, which are made of aluminum.
They are often titanium-coated, to prevent corrosion...but (often, within a very few years) the titanium coating fails.
I suspect that constant rubbing causes the hard coating to disengage from the soft base metal...
This is an extreme example, but think of "applying a super-tough polyurethane coating to some dried hard clay soil".
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...In my house, the flooring is VERY wide (stunning) Vermont pine planks...but those pine planks are VERY soft, and scratch WAY too easily.
My plan is to sand down the floor and apply a product called "Gym Seal" (a super-tough gymnasium floor finish), but my concern - regarding durability - is precisely the type of concern expressed just above.

The issue is with the brittleness of the coating. You want “toughness”. The gym floor coating is tough—it has to be significantly misshapen before it tears or cracks. This was a big advantage of polyurethane varnish over traditional varnish. brittle materials crack before they yield—bending a piece of glass (brittle) like a coat hanger breaks it before it will stay deformed.

And it’s the problem with nitrocellulose lacquer used on brass—it’s too brittle and eventually cracks even from (presumably) thermal expansion. It is quite hard but lacks toughness.

Titanium nitride is a brittle ceramic, despite its hardness, and that’s why it is used on stiff substrates like steel (which is twice as stiff as brass). Metallic titanium itself is not brittle (though it is softer than steel), but the coatings on your mouthpieces are titanium nitride, not metallic titanium.

I have a watch (a modern Zodiac) that has a titanium nitride PVD coating. It’s gorgeous—looks exactly like 18k rose gold. But it will eventually wear on the sharp corners even on a stainless steel substrate, so one has to be careful. Even if a mouthpiece is coated with a hard treatment like titanium nitride, it should not be put where the rim gets rubbed against hard, rough surfaces (laminate floors are the worst). (Gold is softer than steel, but it’s tough, so it will conform to any dent inflicted on the steel without peeling. But it will also wear off eventually because of softness.)

The titanium nitride on hard steel drill bits eventually wears off, even when only used to drill wood (though i usually lose the drill bit before that happens).

Rick “wearing thin” Denney

sidebar:

Coating those aluminum trombone valves with titanium seems to me to be a bit like painting a ball of clay with epoxy paint.
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I suspect the durability and life of the titanium coating on surfaces - that are strong enough effectively to support it - depends on the angle at which the ions are blasted at an item. I suspect that not very many of them hit the corners of your watch, whereas they hit the round/symmetrical rim of a mouthpiece pretty darn evenly. (At first, I expected this titanium coating stuff to eventually show wear and begin to fail on these rims, but I’ve just never seen it…at least: not yet.) Due to how a cup of a mouthpiece is shaped, I’ve seen titanium coating failure down in there, which is why I’m not willing to coat the cups for customers. Further, it seems to me that the only practical reason for coating is for people who have really serious nickel allergies, as there is a 8% - 15% nickel in stainless steel (depending on the alloy). The face touches the rim. It’s difficult to imagine how a face could easily/routinely touch a mouthpiece cup interior. The main reason people ask for those coatings, though, is obviously for looks. Cups look like silver, and (the one particular color of) titanium coatings that we use on the rims looks like gold… except except they stay shiny, are extremely resistant to wear, and are resistant to scratching.

bloke “Titanium coatings can be applied in all sorts of wild colors, as has been seen on sports equipment and other things.”

Since this popped back up, I'll give an update:

I have a new RT 88+ for the 12J, and a Blokepiece for my Kanstul. I haven't had an issue since I retired the old PT48. My dermatologist said it absolutely sounded like a brass sensitivity, and she suggested I use my psoriasis medicine on it whenever it happens. It definitely did help clear up the issues when it was there. As it is, I have only been practicing 2-3 hours a day right now, mainly to maintain my chops. Bass gigs have come back in full force, but tuba gigs are still here-and-there, but hoping that picks up more soon, too.