today's exotic and exciting work in the repair industry

[bloke]

I'm returning to a Jupiter euphonium that I rated it as disgusting two days ago and set down (prior to the epic mailing of all of those tuba mouthpieces - discussed in another forum). It's one of those that comes all unscrewed and unbolted. I rarely take those apart - because all it does is weaken their structure when working on them, but this one was so smashed up it got the valve section out of the way of all the smashes for me. I've got the outer bows all smoothed out and half ass polished so I can see the surfaces easier. Some braces attached to the upper bow were smashed in about 50%, and using some over-inch-in-diameter football-shaped large bent balls - utilizing shortcut methods of devised over the decades, I've got those pushed up and level again. It's better than taking them off, because leaving them in place and then touching up their solder joints increases the likelihood of a bolt- together instrument going back together easily, after being epically torn up by scholarly youth.

The valve section has several busted braces, but I don't think I'm going to have to do as much alignment work as I did on a couple of fifty-year-old Yamaha 321 euphoniums that belong to the same school (which are part of the same work order). I hope I can find enough of these goofy Jupiter gauge brace socket flange thingies... I've gone through a ton of them over the summer.

The mouthpipe tube on this the most recent version is absurdly undersized - in my view (as far as bore is concerned) - and there are dents in it, but the slide connection where it removes and unbolts is hopelessly stuck, so those dents may need to remain., unless I get really lucky today with some penetrating oil.

Before I do this, I need to slightly pretty up a couple of Yamaha alto saxophones that Mrs. bloke is selling. Those will be easy.

After that, I have a B&S-made trombone (probably 30 years old - sold by a Texas music store - originally - which got too big for its britches) which is a knockoff of a Bach 42 with a lightweight slide. I brought this slide back from the dead one time for a young scholar, but it appears as though they've murdered it again.

After that, there's a 1960s satin silver Besson euphonium that I almost had to the finish line, but there's a little leak somewhere where the mouthpipe attaches to the first valve casing, and I was too tired that night too find it, and it's easier to blow cigarette smoke in there and let Mrs bloke find it. Before discovering that leak, I had taken the receiver off (which was that funny in-between size) and reamed it out on the lathe to large shank. Granddad is gifting this to grandson, and I figured grandson needs to be able to easily find a mouthpiece to fit this instrument, instead of finally figuring out that the only ones that fit come from an English company called Wick - or even more expensive sources.
Around 2:00, someone is supposed to arrive from out of state with a (real) Bach 42 trombone with a lightweight slide. I hope the slide doesn't need as much work as the one that's already here, and I also hope that it has not been re-re-re-damaged.

On my mark... Get set.. Go !

[bloke]

The trombone repair this afternoon was for a college student with a heart condition who is basically trying to raise his 12 year old sister and his younger brother as well. His dad has an income but is disabled, and his mother wasn't a very responsible person who was not connected with the family and who passed away recently. He drove about two hours round trip and bought his little sister a $XX King beginner trombone that was repairable but quite rough, including a rough case. His dad handed him about 40% of the money that would have paid for repairing the instrument to good condition. I accepted that amount and did everything it needed and made it look good enough for a little girl to take to school and play in beginner band. I even put a King case emblem on the outside and two new round King balancer stickers on the balancer.

Besides a bunch of playing slide work, bell dents and tuning slide dents, the case needed rivets, a hinge, straightening out of the aluminum valance (closure), and a new case handle. I tossed the playing slide bow in the garbage, and gave him a new King playing slide bow, King playing slide bow tip (an old fashioned large one that I had on hand), and a genuine (old style with a push pin) King water key assembly.
I shined up brown places, did my best to blend in good lacquer with some replacement lacquer, and also soaked the playing slide in the acid bath (prior to any of that shining up stuff, obviously).

Do NOT praise me for being a "good guy", and - if you want to - you can criticize me for having taken any money at all, but I figured it was the actual father's job to pay for it, so I accepted that money provided by his father. As far as doing three times the work for an available amount of money, any of you here would have done the same, because everyone here is a good person, and know that all of you do extra stuff for others.

That took me up to the dinner hour, and was pretty intense, so I'm not going to do anything else today. There's still one more day before Monday, so I'll get everything else done tomorrow that I was planning on doing today.

[Heavy_Metal]

Were these destructive students punished, as we would have been when we were in school?

[bloke]

Were these destructive students punished, as we would have been when we were in school?

Referring back to the first post, I just don't think so. I also think that these instruments get trashed over a period of years, rather than all of it having been done one year by one student. When a student is handed a 5% trashed instrument, there's no reason to be careful enough to prevent it from becoming 20% trashed, when the next student is handed a 20% trashed instrument, there's no reason to be careful enough to prevent it from becoming a 50% trashed instrument, when the next student is handed a 50% trashed instrument, there's no reason to prevent it from becoming a 75% trashed instrument. (Do you think I might be on target, here?)
----
Parenthetically, I view schools purchasing silver plated instruments - particularly for the purposes of marching around outdoors - to be absolutely ridiculous, and even more irresponsible than ridiculous. Shops can refinish portions of instruments that become damaged when they are lacquered, but not when they are silver plated.
----
back on topic:
Over the years, I only really met one band director who was insistent that their students be accountable for denting instruments. He had been a Marine and played euphonium in a Marine base band. He understood that (and this risks stepping over into the political realm, but whatever) the Giuliani method of enforcing even the smallest rules and laws cuts way back on the breaking of the most heinous crime types of laws. After 2 or 3 years of getting everything straightened out, calling out students who re-damaged them, and shaming them and their parents to pay for the repairs, I didn't have to do a whole lot of damage repair for his school after that, and only had to do light maintenance and perhaps sticking some solder joints back together whereby the braces weren't even actually broken - as if going back in time over a half century - when I matriculated.

shaming:
now considered taboo - as the 1950s Dr. Spock baby book has now become law, and pertains to all adults. I can imagine someone being locked in jail for ten years now for casually saying to someone else, "For the sake of your health, don't you think you might want to consider losing some weight?"