as promised: customer repairs (186BB big repair job)

[bloke]

The building has NO school repairs within, so its back to the customer repair backlog.
(Thanks for being patient, individual customers.)

I finally (tonight c. 10 P.M.) started (beyond rummaging through my stuff, and locating parts this instrument will be needing) on this 186 repair. The guy lives two days (road-trip) away but decided to bring it here. (thanks!)

I see all of these jobs on social media whereby the VERY FIRST thing done is to "tear down" the instrument.

me: nope.

The FIRST thing I do is to repair the mouthpipe tube (at least, when it's one of these complicated-geometry ROTARY instruments' mouthpipe tubes).

You see, I prefer that the mouthpipe tube actually fit back onto the instrument, once the huge overall repair job/work is completed.

If I repair the mouthpipe tube OFF the instrument, it's going to change it's geometry (the curves), and (if that were to be allowed to occur) there's no way that it would fit back onto the instrument properly, so (yep) I repair these mouthpipe tubes FIRST THING - and ON THE INSTRUMENT, THEN remove them, set them aside, and THEN I "tear down" the instrument (but - even then - ONLY if I must, as I'm a results-person and NOT a procedure-person).

Actually, (before removing the mouthpipe dents (again: with it still mounted ON the instrument) I removed the dents from the large curved-corners 4th circuit rectangle of tubing (back side of the instrument...and no, I did not un-solder/remove any of that, and SHALL NOT be removing any of that.

I spent about a hour total (4th circuit cylindrical tubing dents + fistfuls of mouthpipe dents), and now it's time to watch some late-night 1950's "Amazing Adventures of Superman" episodes...Did you know that those were ACTUALLY filmed in COLOR (nope, NOT colorized) yet BROADCAST in black-&-white? (I didn't know that until recently.)

Oh yeah: hot chocolate (even though summer), and - yes - the amazing cat is doing pretty good. He's drinking a little bit of water (when he believes I'm not looking) eating patte, a little bit of tuna, and (countless) cat treats (mostly, I'm letting him have those at night). He's also returning to old habits (flirting with male human repair-customer guests, brushing against my legs when I'm at this laptop - such as RIGHT NOW, sleeping on our bed, climbing on my chest for love-petting/purring in the wee hours, etc...I'm starting to believe that he's going to make it.




The little bumpy places (on the front side of the big curve of the mouthpipe) are places where the brass was eaten away a little bit by someone holding the tuba there...' no way I'm going to file/sand that area "smooth"...I'm a repair-guy, not a barbarian!

[bloke]

Today, I removed the bell (to be discarded), but I haven't yet removed the hardware from it (receiver brace, strap ring, thumb ring...thumb ring consists of the oem flange, but with a clarinet joint ring soldered onto it ).

I've also removed the ¿-shaped connector between the 4th rotor and the main slide and have done tons of work on the bottom bow.
The bottom bow is looking pretty nice, and I haven't removed it (and doubt that I will, as it appears that I'm not going to need to do that). I have a new cap for it. (Still mounted on the rest of the body), I've buffed the ugly lacquer off the bottom bow.

I THOUGHT I had a new cap for the TOP bow (??), but I'm not seeing one. The oem top bow cap is very repairable.

I removed a few more tiny dentletts from a few other cylindrical tubing places...The "¿" piece...it's a little rough, and I'll take care of it later.

This thing has hit the deck quite a few times, and (predictably) the #1 and #4 rotor stems were spinning off-center, so I whacked on both of those and centered them.

The paddle carriage is slightly mangled, so I might mess with it today...either that or the big top bow...or both.
The carriage supports aren't in line, but (thankfully) neither are any of the three mashed into the instrument.)

Here are a couple more pics of the (formerly "ruggedly-dented") mouthpipe (with the burned lacquer cleaned off...NO filing/sanding, and NO heavy buffing.
I'm pleased with it.




When I have the bottom and top bows done, I'll take a couple of pics of the body (sans bell), and then (later on) WITH the replacement bell and the mouthpipe mounted. (The replacement bell is a new/VERY-old-stock 16-1/2" bell that I've squirreled away in my clothes closet forever...I'm never going to personally own a 186 again, so I decided to sell it to this customer. I have a new/NEW-stock 17-3/4" 186 bell onto which it will be mated up with a 186-BB that I'll be slicking out for sale. Since schools usually buy them, I decided that the 17-3/4" would be better for schools (slightly more "push-it-over-onto-the-floor-to-see-what-happens" resistant) vs. a 16-1/2".

[bloke]

I'm glad I didn't pull these large bows and screw around with the Ferree's dent machine.
It's a good tool, but - if I can do something by hand faster than with a tool - and not have to un-solder big stuff, and then solder it back together - all the better.

...so I've made some progress.

left to do (another day) are to
- install both bow caps, and clean up their solder seams
- install the bell
- re-install the mouthpipe,
- repair the main slide connector and reinstall it
- check the rotors linkage (I do this BEFORE putting a complete or partial finish on an instrument)
- play around with lacquer tint (mostly gold, some brown/bronze, almost nothing else...maybe .0000000000000001% - ie. a pinhead - of green)
- shine up the outer body parts and the mouthpipe
- shoot some lacquer on the shined-up parts (which matches the 60-years-old lacquer on the valve section and inner bows
- I might even replace those pencil erasers with some black rubber.
(I'm going back out right now to straighten the lever carriage, line up the carriage brackets, shut down the radio/air-conditioner/lights, and either come in or go out into the tortuous heat and spray herbicide.






yeah...I'm nearly as interested in finishing this thing up as is its owner in getting it back.

[rjdawson]

The "ruggedly dented" mouthpipe is looking good...I love descriptive names! Looks like you even got it to sparkle a bit...

[rjdawson]

Pencil erasers??? SMH! That must have been a quick fix thanks to a harrowed and haggard band director (looking at you, Stryker, haha!)

Looking good, Joe. BTW, did I ever mention how much I like the contrasting silver sleeves with the brass main tubes? That, to me, is what sets a Mirafone apart.

[bloke]

I didn't want to lay in bed tonight worrying about straightening out the oem upper bow cap, and then trying to convince it to fit back on the upper bow (on a MONDAY, no less), so I just went ahead and undertook that undesirable project this evening (now: 7:25 P.M., Sunday).

I think it looks OK. I'll clean it up and shine it up tomorrow.

[Stryk]

Pencil erasers??? SMH! That must have been a quick fix thanks to a harrowed and haggard band director (looking at you, Stryker, haha!)

Hey, that's one thing I did have a lot of in the bandroom!

[bloke]

This is the very-old/new-stock (vintage 16-1/2") bell this tuba will be receiving.

I'm not soldering it on yet.

It would define soldering on the bottom bow cap as quite awkward, and there's still some first-stage buffing to do (on the outer portions of the rest of the instrument) that would also become awkward.

' sorta not-the-best news for the instrument's owner:
Once it's completely assembled and ready to polish, it will need to sit until high temps for the day drop down (at least) into the mid-80's.
I can't be dropping sweat all over this thing while also trying to final-polish it, and 95/90% humidity is not ideal for lacquering, either.
(Actually, the current humidity level in the air is reasonably low - c. 55%, but still - it's too hot to avoid dropping sweat all over the tuba whilst polishing it.)
If high temps are at least down into the 80's, I can final-polish this thing early some morning (when temps are in the low 70's).

semi-promising news: In one week (ie. "extended forecast") the high temp is predicted to be 82°(with the morning low being 60°).

[Stryk]

This is the very-old/new-stock (vintage 16-1/2") bell this tuba will be receiving.

I'm not soldering it on yet.

This is looking so good!!

[bloke]

This is looking so good!!

LOL...New parts and repaired parts tend to offer a better appearance than trashed or damaged parts.

one year from today:
phone: riiiiingggg
uhh...bloke...uhh...I had a little bit of an accident. The bag...

==========================

JUST kidding...

[rjdawson]

I'm sure the "dear customer" will pledge to NEVER do such a thing as drop this beauty or knock it ove...DAMN! Correction: He will pledge to never drop it! BTW, you will supply a bottle of touch-up paint/lacquer, right? HaHa!

[bloke]

Mrs. bloke was busy, and I sort like her to help hold when I'm soldering big stuff, so I grabbed this piece out of the box and messed with it.
Sadly, it took 45 minutes to get it looking this good, as it was sorta banged up.

If you see any imperfections, it's because I don't file nor sand when repairing.
- takes time
- leaves part of the instrument on the floor - to be swept up and discarded

"Take your time" instruct customers, to which my (silent) reply) is "not if I can help it".

I'm interested in fast good results for good money.

time: That's what my life's made of, and I prefer to reserve as much of it as I can to pursue my own interests.

taxes: "time-theft"

scratches: legacies of young scholars

weird dark reflections (??)...I'm not re-taking these; Mrs. bloke is now ready to help me with the bottom bow cap.

' got a fresh cup of coffee and heading back out; thank the Lord for air-conditioning...I believe it's 95°F out there (real, not sensationalized/"feels-like").

[bloke]

I have to go with Mrs. bloke to some doodle-e-doo-doo meeting (almost in Memphis), YET we got 50% of the bottom bow cap soldered on (the LARGE half).

I have NO IDEA where I got this cap.

It's obviously OLD, because it's WIDE (just like the one that came off), LONG (within 1/4 inch of both ends) and the ends (they no longer do this) are PRE-CUT.

It's new/old...a mystery...

Maybe (??) I bought it decades ago, but decided to do ahead and repair/re-install the original (??)...most likely explanation...

[York-aholic]

That is neat to see an NOS bell like that. Thats going to make the new owner happy.

Nice work, as usual.

[bloke]

I got the bottom bow cap on tonight after we got home from Mrs. bloke's shindig.
She was nice, and went out and held it for me at angles which prevented the solder from running down the bottom bow in the wrong directions. (This could have also been prevented with less heat, but it would have taken longer with less heat as well.)

Something else we had to do when we got home was to stuff more medicine down the poor cat's gullet.... This isn't doing anything positive for our really close relationship.

Tomorrow morning I think we're going to take her old Corolla in to see if we can get some minor problems addressed. I really don't understand why we should have to get anything fixed on that car; it only has 250,000 miles on it.

[bloke]

We went on an errand this morning at a place that's about 45 minutes away... We were gone for about three hours... Just being out in the extreme heat today sort of wore me down, so I took about an hour and a half nap when we got home...
After that, I went out and continued to push towards being able to mount the bell and and mouthpipe on this thing.
I'm not there yet. It was so hot today that pre-buffing the bell and buffing some other difficult-to-reach surfaces prior to them being difficult to reach would have been stifling... It will be several degrees cooler tomorrow...
I did several things, but the main thing I did today - that was really important - was mounting the main tuning slide.
It's complicated on any 186, but it's particularly complicated on the B-flat version - due to all the geometry involved, as the connector between the fourth rotor and the main slide is three&dimensional, rather than two-dimensional (as in the C version).
There are so many things that affect things as far as coplanar and parallel, and none of those things have any built-in adjustments, other than the fact that everything's made of brass and therefore is sort of like putty, rather than like concrete.
I'm pleased with the final product.
Realize that the multi-dimensional connector was all beat up, so dent removal from that piece could have easily distorted it to a point that it wouldn't have been usable, but - knowing that was a possibility, and having done a bunch of these over the years - I simply didn't allow it to happen.

... Other cool stuff...???
I sold three brand new JP marching baritones today.
They are in stock at the warehouse, and the school that's really in a hurry to have them will probably have them by next Monday. (They're similar to Yamaha in every way, other than the JP feature stainless steel brazed-together pistons (vs. lead soldered and nickel-plated pistons), and the JP cases are really durable (a lot like those Jupiter cases) versus those thin wood trapezoid cases.

[bloke]

Before this thing was bounced around for decades by young scholars, it was made by German craftsmen, not jimbo...and I don't work for jimbo either.





insertion depth, angle, AND rotation...


This brace was all beat up, and I had to smooth out the dents in the flanges. These days (design change), this brace is shorter and braces to the smaller bow instead of the bottom bow and is much easier to install.


...and then...The SLIDE has to be built/futzed to precision-align with everything else:

[bloke]

The previous explains why reassembling a B-flat main slide on a 186 is more complicated than reassembling a C main slide on one.

The connector for the C main slide is only two dimensional and only makes it simple 90° turn. Further, the C version doesn't have a required contact brace point with the bottom bow.

[bloke]

It doesn't look all that different today, but the difference is somewhat significant:

With just a little bit more solder clean-up (mostly small places on the edges of the bow caps - p.i.t.a.) - and a pre-polish of the bell section, it's READY to mount the bell, mouthpipe, and bell do-dads (strap ring, thumb ring, lyre holder).

I had another John Mueller two-hour tuba quartet rehearsal today (playing really low on the comp. euphonium sort hurts my brain...and it's nearly an hour drive to get into that suburb of Memphis and another hour back out here), and didn't get out to the shop until around 3:00 (I needed lunch and an hour rest (remember, I slipped and fell last night on some weird oily spot on the tile floor in the passageway behind the fireplace...' bruised my left hip...hurts!), but got it to this stage:








I'm leaving most of the INTERIOR (small bows and valve section) original lacquer in place. To come sorta close to the color of the old lacquer, (after polishing the large exterior stuff to a final level), I'm going to oxidize all of the freshly-polished (unlacquered) surfaces with a propane torch, and then (as previously stated) at some bronze, gold, and (a tiny bit of) green tint to the clear lacquer. That's worked out pretty well in the past.

[bloke]

The guy who owns this is nice, so I offered a free bonus (which didn't take long).

I aligned the #1 slide nicely (after repairing the damaged slide tubes) and vented the #1 rotor.