Trumpets are annoying to refinish.

[bloke]

Even though small, there are too many cracks and crevices, and slides (brought in ill-aligned, regardless of the original price/quality level) consume my time dialing them in, and - pistons (even though they were perfectly happy with them prior to the refinishing job) are expected to function better-than-new, because a guy (simply hired to strip/polish/shoot lacquer, as if a body shop is expected to blueprint an engine as part of the dent removal and repainting) is - well - expected to perform that miracle, "because"...





In particular, the "French Besson" style trumpets (such as Benge, as seen) are freakin' delicate.
I removed NO scratches, and nor did I fake over (with a file and sandpaper...EEK !!!) any worn areas.

Something I DID do:
The back half of the valve section...

(though no dents, and the #1 slide, the #3 slide, and all the pistons seemed to be working ok (for a trumpet that had been sitting for quite a few years)

...was "jacked" - with the outside main slide tubes out of plane by at least 3/16". I pulled it back into plane by eyeballing it (and luckily, none of the above machines were messed up when I did that). I must have hit it pretty close to dead on, because (after final cleaning and testing the fit of the main slide with NO grease) it slid out on its own. (I caught it. )

[prodigal]

Trumpets are annoying to begin with, let alone working on the instrument.