Bass Trombone Overhaul. Before, After and Shiny.

This post isn't going to be too informative. It's just pictures, sorry.

Before:

After:

And, back from the plater:

Tuba Marching Leadpipe

"Replace Leadpipe" was crossed out on the repair tag. Next to it was written "Patch and repair leadpipe." It's always a good sign when the school doesn't want to pay for parts.
This is what I was working with.

Two big ol' cracks along dents and mystery damage under an oversized ferrule. Rather than patching over the damage as I normally do, I decided to replace a section of the tube. Mainly because I had a section that would work.

I started by pulling it apart and cleaning it up.

Dirty:

And clean:

The next thing I did was trim off the damaged sections and trim a section to replace it.   

I didn't get too fancy with ferrules for this project. I just found some tube that was the right diameter and cut some sections.

Notice that the guard is too close to the edge of the original tube to allow a ferrule to fit. I popped it off and filed a notch in it to allow the ferrule to fit.

At this point there wasn't much left to do but solder it up and buff it.

And here it is all polished up. This is for a beat up, worn marching horn so I was not worried about it being raw brass opposed to silver plated.

Bass Sax Neck Patch.

Gross. 

This is the neck off of a pat. 1914 conn, Satin gold, bass sax. The horn belongs to one of the mummers bands from Philadelphia and it was beat.  I knew going in that this wouldn't be the most glamorous repair in the world. I just wanted it to be solid and stand up to another 50 years of string band music.

I started out by popping off all of the old patches and cleaning up the tube.

I also found more holes to patch. Fun.

Before I could form patches, I had to remove dents. On this old brittle brass, It wasn't easy. I used a combination of dent rods and MDRS.

Forms were made from epoxy putty. I used them to form patches from annealed 0.012'' brass stock.

Before I finished fitting patches I wanted to trim out the cracks to prevent them from spreading.

Next step was to finish fitting the patches and solder them on. 

Last step was to do a little cleanup.

Like I said, It wasn't going to be a beautiful repair. I do hope it will make it a few decades though.