That *OTHER* 1971 Mirafone 186 on My Bench

[the elephant]

No pics. Sorry.

Today I worked on that stubborn 1st slide and got it where I can stand it until I decide the fate of this tuba.

Nice.

Then I ventured back into the "scary unknown" and opened up the seam of the bell garland that I tried to install. It took a while as I wanted to make sure the rounded-over edge did not crack or split. (The old one was missing a large part of this edge, so I don't want to wreck this part in the same manner.) I got it up, flared out just a bit so it will slip over the bell edge easily. I spent a long time with some narrow pliers smoothing and flattening this rim all the way around. I will unsolder it tomorrow afternoon and then spend time cleaning up the bell with the dent machine. (The edge of the rim is close to being FUBARed, but I don't want to buy another bell, so I am motivated to figure this out. So far it seems like the wire did not fit the channel all that well; perhaps I was supposed to hammer it into the garland channel first? The old kranz used a skinny, steel wire and the bead of the kranz was pretty small. This one is larger as the nickel silver wire is a lot fatter, however, the channel did not seem to want that wire in it. Maybe I received the wrong wire material? It would not surprise me.

Regardless, I will work to restore the original shape of the garland and then fit the wire to it somewhat better. I have an idea that departs from instruction and memory, but it might work. If it does I will share it. If it doesn't then I'll act as though everything is fine while I secretly order up another kranz.

Ugh…

[the elephant]

Today I finished up the bell Kranz. It is rough, to say the least, but the excuses I will trot out in my defense are 1.) that the Kranz was installed fully and then removed and reinstalled THREE TIMES and looks pretty beat up now, and 2.) the bell sucked hind feet when I got it. It is thin to the point of being fragile, IMHO.

I now know how to put these on correctly on the first shot. This beat-TF bell was my training mule. My issue was that I was afraid to trim back enough of the bell flare edge after all the dent machine work. Dan O told me it usually would be about .25" to 3/8" depending on how tightly I used the machine and that I would probably overdo things the first time.

He was correct but in reverse. I used the dent machine too much and repeatedly did not trim the bell edge enough. It is still too large in two spots, but I AM SOOOOOO DONE WITH THE HOLES, CRACKS, DESTROYED FLARE SHAPE AND FUBAR-ed KRANZ OF THIS HELL BELL!

I damaged the very fine edge of the Kranz that is hammered around the wire and bell flare edge. I hammered it closed, pried it open, over and over. (I'm stinking lucky that it did not crack on me.) So that fine edge is now full of "teeth" from the pliers and will forever look ratty. I still have a lot of cleanup to do, so it might end up looking good enough.

The bell is still too large for the garland in two spots and I have some minor bulging caused by this and the fact that the shape of the bell flare was highly distorted and does not really fit within the shape needed to mate up nicely with the Kranz.

What *is* a boy to do?

I am calling this mediocre work "good enough" because I know what this horn's future will be, most likely, so it does not really matter. Again: GOOD ENOUGH. (for now?)

Not very good at all (when you look at it closely) but the fat lady sang as I was wrapping it up today, and I will heed her operatic angst. (for now?)


This bell has a LOT of scarring, three filled cracks, and two stretched-and-folded-over spots. It will never look good, and I finally realized I was putting lipstick on a pig at 5:15 p.m. today when I called it quits on this component. It is done.

[the elephant]

For anyone keeping up with the box scores, only the bottom bow remains. Then reassembly…

[bloke]

It’s actually VERY nice, sir.
=========
I attempted to show in pictures (the camera wouldn’t pick them up) c. ten LONG linear gouges that run parallel to each other from the bell throat up into the bell flare (Holton project) that look like somebody mashed down really hard with a steel punch and just drew a bunch of deep lines with the tip of that punch into the bell interior.
I could crank down with a dent machine as hard as anyone, they would never disappear, and all I would accomplish would be work-hardening the bell...or, I could sand the hell out of those long straight cuts and end up with a brass foil bell.
Sometimes (always?), all we can manage to do is what needs to be what gets done.

[the elephant]

Yep. Old, and ugly, and staying that way.

Installing this new kranz was *very* educational. I have the new *engraved* kranz for the factory CC, but I will save it for when the old one becomes an issue. It is not horrible right now, so it stays.

On this bell I still have some tappy-tappy work to do to the rolled edge of the garland to make it smoother. That is pretty much it. Any more work to this bell could damage it.

[the elephant]

Okay, so I did that consummate "Wade Thing" and went too far. I needed to leave the freaking bell alone but I decided to do some more work. So yeah, now it looks a bit more rough.

Live and learn.

I taped the leaking, disaster bottom bow, the bell, three of the leadpipes, and the excellent valve section together and made me a nice CC tuba today.

The pitch is very good, though not perfect. The top space G is a bit flat. D, Eb, and E in the staff are less low than on my factory CC. The 4th line F seems to be just fine. Bottom line G is good. There do not seem to be any weird notes within each valve combination overtone series. The horn blows free, open, and clear from pedal A up to G above middle C. I played scales, arpeggios, some etudes in all 12 keys.

Today was quite interesting for me. I enjoyed blowing life back into this old tuba. The bell, scars and all, still makes a lovely 186 tone, and the horn, despite all my hacking, plays well in tune, perhaps better than my factory CC 186.

I can't wait for both to be finished so I can compare them directly.

I think this is going to be a very good tuba.

[the elephant]

Note to Joe:

The place in the 6/4 tuba top bow that you suspect causes the pitch to sag so badly on bottom line G is much skinnier in this tuba than with my factory CC, and the G is spot-on. The same pitch on the factory CC is easily lip-able but is little low. I thought you would like to know this specific, arcane bit of information to pad your theory. (I am talking right where the top bow bends over from being vertical to being horizontal.) I have not measured my Holton or either 186 to see if these fall at the same location in the 16' bugle, but I am pretty sure they are within a half a foot of one another, so it *could* be related. I will have to take these measurements at some point, I guess.

Prosit.

This horn, with the skinny (BBb) top bow and inner branches… in-tune G


The factory CC with the fatter top bow and inner branches… slightly low G

[bloke]

I really appreciate you sharing that observation…
Still, Sergeant Schultz and I know precisely the same amount of stuff.

[prairieboy1]

I took your advice and listened to your playing on my desktop with headphones. The sound is terrific. It is sonorous and fills the room. I know you have a keeper there. It must be very gratifying to you to have produced such a great horn out of what you started with. Congratulations and let us in on a side by side test when the horns are completed with more pictures please!

[the elephant]

Today I spent like eight or nine hours fixing up my shop, cleaning up old messes, tossing out old trash that had built up in drawers and such. Underneath all the mess I found…

… another mess.

So then I scrubbed dirty paint on my cabinets and washout sink and mopped the floor. I spent two hours cleaning out my two huge, rolling, red toolboxes. I can now close the top sections of both, to the never-ending delight of one of my cats.
I mapped out all the remaining holes and cracks in the homebrew 186 with this Rube Goldberg device and now have a plan to finish up that mess so I can assemble the horn.

I also spent an hour with the wife, taking very careful comparative measurements of all the possible leadpipes I could use on this tuba. The factory CC will have a custom-bent leadpipe that Miraphone made for me. It is the second one. The first one did not come out well, fit-wise, but is probably a better pipe. (It has very sexy bends without flaw.) The one that fits has a few places I need to go over with dent balls to raise up some flattened spots.

So this pipe that did not fit the CC can be made to fit the homemade CC since that tuba does not have a *real* 5th rotor but one I cobbled together and that will have a slightly different upper 5th slide, and the oddness of that slide looks like it might accommodate the castoff leadpipe.

If not, the stock 186 pipe that will not be used on the factory CC fits, too, but due to my wonky upper 5th slide does not work as well as the "accident" leadpipe.

Today has been a very good one for me.

[the elephant]

I managed to unfuqtangulate my bottom bow. I ended up dealing with the crumbly spots by making two large patches from nickel silver bow guard scraps. The fragile nature of these two patches made me want to cut out the bad metal and braze in these patches, but alas, my chops for this sort of work are not good enough to do something like that. So I silver soldered the patches over the suspect areas and then spot filled any tiny holes that were not covered.

It worked. It looks like some seriously sketchy stuff, but it is solid and the bow no longer leaks at all, anywhere. I checked the entire thing with my Rube Goldberg device to allow me to do the old soapy water test with the bow on the bench and me blowing into some clear leveling tube. It is tight as a drum now.

I then tried to fit and wire down the bow guard from the other 186. It received new guards (because bling) and the crushed guards that came with this beater are being saved until I have the correct attachments for my Z-60 to allow me to work on guards. So the so-so guards are now on this tuba, and in context, they don't look so bad. They looked bad on the other horn because I want that one to look close to new. This chop-shop CC will never look new again, so these guards are a perfect fit, except that they do not really fit, either, heh, heh…

The two patches are as thinned out as I dared to grind them, and one of them sits a bit proud and makes the guard not fit AT ALL in this area. Kowing where this was heading I installed it *wrong* because it was a means to an end. There is no way around the fact that there is one 3" run of guard edge that will be rippled and look terrible because I will have to hammer it down over the patch that is too proud. The other one was much more flush and the guard had enough gap over it. But the other one was too thick and in the exact wrong place in the curve of the bow, so I accepted this and soldered the guard down in the center and then did the fat end all the way. My sin was to do the skinny end, too, despite the huge gaps in that one section. This way most of the guard (all of it on the front side) will look very nice, and one short run on the back will look like trash. I can deal with that if the rest of the guard fits well enough.

Here are some pics of the two guard plates and the 80% installed guard to the bow. I didn't remember to take shots of the two patches, but just imagine major work done by an apprentice while his boss is on his lunch break. It looked *that* crappy.

I will finish the gapped parts of the guard tomorrow (or whenever the weather permits) and then clean up all the mess. More pics at that time.

But it works.

By the way, when I started silver soldering the patches onto the bow it was 41º F and calm. When I stopped soft soldering the guard to the bow it was 37º out in my lovely carport. I really need to enclose half of my carport to use as a shop. I use traditional tin/lead solder and refuse to ever use the lead-free junk again, and I do not want to install a huge vent fan in the wall of my laundry room where my workspace is located. It would be much easier to throw up a few walls and frame in a shop exhaust fan at the same time.

Someday…

Thanks for reading.

[the elephant]

I finished that stinking bottom bow tonight. There is still some simple dent work and cleanup to do. There are a few small gaps that need to be closed in the seam between the guard and bow, but, in truth, this four-piece subassembly is ready for use.

I would like to add that IT WAS FRIGGIN' COLD OUT THERE!

Anyway, I did all that needed to be done with the bow off of the tuba and will do the final cleanup work as I get to it.

I think it came out fairly flawed, but surprisingly good when one considers the whole "you can't make chicken salad out of chicken sh¡t" analogy. I did a lot of very light buffing but did not try to remove serious haze in spots. I mostly went after sanding and scraping marks. I'll go after the patches of haze with a *real* final buffing after assembly, but this horn (like the factory CC) will be raw brass, so *any* metal removal to pimp out a tuba that will end up looking like an old, brown dress shoe in need of a shine seems pretty stupid to me.

[Tubajug]

Keel and all! Very nice! I haven't been brave enough to tackle bow caps yet... yours looks quite good considering how it started!

[the elephant]

Keel and all! Very nice! I haven't been brave enough to tackle bow caps yet... yours looks quite good considering how it started!

Thanks, Jordan! The ferrule is the one that came with the horn. The guard came off of Dan's factory CC, and so did the top bow guard. The factory CC received brand new guards. (I am saving the two from this tuba for when I buy the correct attachments for my Z-60.)

I reused the keel on Dan's old horn as it fit the curvature of that bottom bow better, so the one on this bow is brand new. The one that came on it was pretty bent up. It is saved in a box, and I might try to repair it someday.

The one on top is on this bow. The one below is the one that came on this tuba. It has been pounded flat and one end has been bent. Lots of reshaping to do to the old part.

[hrender]

Really nice work. I wish you took contract work, but you're 1000 miles away anyway.

[the elephant]

I have to clean up the CC bell and bow, now. (Yeah, it's the one on the left.) It has "solder pads" that will not line up with where the parts will now lay. Once it is cleaned up I can play mix-and-match with the bell sections and the machines to see what happens. (No, I seriously doubt that I will swap the CC bell to the cut valve section, but I might as well play with these before they are soldered back together.)

[the elephant]

After my appointment at the local voodoo hut, I came home and got back to work. I cleaned up the two bell-to-bottom bow assemblies, removing as much of the old solder patches from leadpipes and from those long braces between the bow and the tuning slide.

Then I decided to go ahead and stick this homebrew CC together for real for the first time since I have owned it. I used the original nickel silver 188 leadpipe that was on the other 186. I got it to fit quite nicely. I am not finished with this, yet, though. It will come off after some time and the two other candidate pipes will get tried, but not for some time, yet.

I will clean up all the mess tomorrow; I can only tolerate working out in the cold for so many hours each day, and my limit had been reached an hour before I stopped tonight. Anyway, all is airtight and pretty straight.

After an hour of playing it, I can report that this tuba plays quite well and is a keeper!

In case it wasn't clear, it no longer looks like the one on the left. HAHAHA!!!

[prairieboy1]

[bloke]

...the Y-D Chop-Shop

[York-aholic]

Making very good progress!