In the meantime, another appointment - which was someone who had driven 2 days from 1100 miles away - showed up with a Holton 345 bottom bow, very distressed mated top bow with a rib on it and some mashed in places on the rib, and a old King 22-in bell with some pretty interesting creases in it, but nice thick metal.
Holton 6/4 top bows are pretty involved, their repairs are completely hand work, and it had some challenging dents on the underside of the curve. I left the rib in place but did some tricks to get the bow smooth underneath it. I did un-solder and lift a couple of places part way down the rib and I lifted the bottom end of the rib and repair an ugly dent in the lower point of the rib without taking it off. That bottom bow repair was a cap-off restoration. I didn't use the dent machine on the big bottom bow - but just did a lot of burnishing and ended up looking as good as if I had used the dent machine so both the customer and I were happy with it. I did use the dent machine on the bottom bow CAP, but I did a lot of pre-hammering on it with molds against my wooden desk, first. Amazingly, the cap actually fit when I was done smoothing it out which is usually not the case.
I saved the 22-in bell for last, because I can fix bells sort of on autopilot when I'm in a stupor, which I just about was because this work wasn't finished until about 2:30 a.m., and - except for really short lunch and dinner breaks - I worked all the way through. I got to bed and to sleep about 3:00 or so, got up early this morning and waved my friend off, and I think I'm going to lay back down for a little while.
It was a $1XXX day, but - particularly as I'm about to turn another year older - I'm feeling it today.
As far as repairing the curved portion of these long Holton 6/4 upper bows, I just haven't come up with any way of repairing them without totally doing them by hand...I was able to employ a few "tricks" and avoid removing/reinstalling the rib (and it is smooth inside underneath the rib), but/and the denting on the underside/inside curve of the bow portion of these is particularly challenging to remove (and do so with them appearing as though they've not been dented). This bow was quite banged up all over. As far as the "legs" of these bows are concerned, it's pretty easy to get them looking good from a straight-on viewpoint, but - sighting down them and having them ALSO look good that way (as well as reflecting light in straight lines), that requires another couple of levels of detail.
...No, I did NOT un-solder the ferrule - neither from this nor from the bottom bow.
Realize that the curved portion of the piece is large than the bottom bows of most any of the "3/4"-size tubas.
No...It's not quite a large as a 184 bottom bow, but Miraphone never made any fractional-size claims regarding that model, and the model 184 (particularly with its 18mm valveset bore) is certainly larger than 3/4.
After straightening out this bottom bow with the cap-off method (as the cap was quite distressed), I was extremely pleased that (sort of astonishingly, to me - really lucky, this time) the cap fit right back on the bow (as if a new part)...only requiring three or four wires to temporarily hold it in place. I did not install a rib, as none was either supplied or requested. I believe the customer might have one at home that's either new or in pretty good condition.
After reinstalling the cap, didn't clean up the solder seam all the way around...It was already getting close to 1 A.M., and I still had a bell to straighten out. (The owner will clean up the solder themselves.) I recently found a source for $6/lb. 50/50 solder rolls, though it's thick (1/8") rather than my preferred high-tin-allow 1/16" solder...but I also found a considerably under-$20/lb. source for 1/16" (though I would need to purchase a 5 lb. roll and spool it off onto empty 1 lb. rolls - which is no big deal.) I'll probably use the really cheap stuff for school repairs, and the stuff that prefer for jobs such as installing a new (pre-silver plated) mouthpipe or bell on a silver trumpet - or maybe re-soldering a floor peg flange to the bell of a $15K bass clarinet...where even minor cosmetic f-ups and messes simply can't exist). I was also pleased that (atypical of Holton 345 bottom bows) this one's "bore" is just about round (vs. oval), as I really did NOT have the time to remove that INNER bow cap in order to employ rounding rings.
Here's the formerly screwed-up King 22-inch bell that they also brought. Who knows why someone previously decided to buff off half the silver...(??)
They're considering trimming this bell for a King sousaphone-to-helicon conversion. (This is a bell - only - that they picked up off an auction site.)
The rim on this bell was VERY stiff/stout. I had to beat the hell out of it to get it "fairly" straight and the - later - quite a bit more to get it completely straight (planar). There's a spot on the concrete floor of my workroom that I know to be particularly straight/flat/planar, which is where I "test" bell rims that I've straightened. It was 2:30 A.M. by the time I got this bell to this stage. Typically, I buff them in order to check for small issues that I may have missed, but - I was out of energy and out of time... (I believe it is pretty nice, but apologies are if there were easy to address last remnants of dents that I missed, due to a lack of polishing.) BOTH the customer and myself were pretty sick two days ago. This caused THEM to leave a day later - putting THEM in a time-squeeze (necessity to be home by Saturday afternoon for a good-paying Saturday evening gig), but - also - had they NOT been ill and had arrived on the day the had planned to arrive - was too ill myself to have been able to do (any of) this work a day earlier. In fact, Mrs. bloke and I did quotes and three of the four piles of school instruments currently here, and I was just about too ill to even manage to do that.
bloke "not yet 70, but - very very soon - will be in my '70th year'...These 10 A.M. until 2:30 A.M. workdays are somewhat strenuous, and somewhat stressful workdays are not particularly suited for those in my age group...but the owner of these instrument parts stood by steadfastly, and offered good/interesting/engaging conversation - and did an excellent job of patronizing me."
