
Repairing a Bent Trombone Slide (2004) - camtarn
http://www.oberloh.com/SPL/spl1.htm
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ianbooker
From time to time you wonder how things end up on hacker news. I think this
time its just pure Internet nostalgia, someone giving a somewhat obscure
advice away for free, without agenda or commercial interest..

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alimw
Well I clicked because my trombone's slide is bent.

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fock
I clicked because it's trombones. My problem though is that the valve for the
F-attachment is broken off and I need to resolder it. Does anyone have a nice
tutorial outlying the pitfalls associated with soldering that (my approach
would be to heat the lever part in the oven, heat the installation site with a
blowtorch and add solder and put the preheated part on it, hoping it's no cold
solder joint)

~~~
jacquesm
Depending on how much you value the instrument my first port of call would be
to go to a music store and get a quote, and if you feel that the quote is high
relative to the value of the instrument then you can go the DIY route.

What you want is called brazing, not soldering, and it will cause the
silvering of the parts to be burned off so you'll have to re-silver it
(assuming a silver plated trombone).

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s0l1dsnak3123
It was these sorts of websites which led me to fall in love with the internet.
How far we've fallen. I miss those heady days.

~~~
vjeux
There’s a ton of similar content on Youtube.

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floren
And that sucks, because videos are good as an augmentation to pages like this,
but sometimes you just want a step-by-step on how to do things without fooling
around rewinding over and over. Plus, no "make sure to like and subscribe" or
"hey guys!!" in this page.

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BozeWolf
This! I absolutely hate instruction video’s! Skipping forward and skipping
back.. watching it for ten minutes to discover you probably skipped the
important part. I guess i am impatient.

Coding video tutorials - never understood it. Car repair video’s: very hard to
follow because most of the time the lightning is bad and the camera is shaky.
A few good pictures with descriptive text. Perhaps a movie if you have to do
something which requires a specific kind of move.

That said: instruction movies about sports are pretty useful.

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phaedrus
I was looking to see if they anneal the brass; maybe the process of removing
the solder heats it enough for that, or maybe the brass used in this
application doesn't require it?

I'm restoring a 25 year old car, and discovered that new heater cores for it
are no longer available. Both my original and the used spare I got were
crushed on the tube ends (from people using vice grips to remove stuck hoses).
I never had much luck reshaping aluminum or brass, but I had recently read
about the process of annealing (which restores plasticity to a work-hardened
metal piece) so decided to give it a try. (As for how someone can be in the
habit of attempting to reshape metal and NOT know what annealing was: such is
the life of a self-taught DIYer.)

I used propane with a turbo-torch tip to heat the ends of the brass tubes
cherry red, and let them cool. Then, in a process very similar to page 2 on
the linked website, I used an internal mandrel (a thick steel pin) and gentle
taps with a flat hammer to reshape it. It was amazing to see the capital
letter "B" shaped crushed tube ends become round again. The first few strikes
move the metal easily; after that each tap makes the metal harder. I could fix
any mistakes by re-annealing and starting over.

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vajrabum
This goes nicely with this video on repairing a damaged (looked destroyed to
me) trombone bell that by coincidence I watched yesterday.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tIsenuUx_c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tIsenuUx_c)

~~~
userbinator
Quite similar to some autobody work, except the metal is much softer and
thinner.

It's interesting that a lot of people would be surprised at just how fragile a
brass instrument is, given that the things they usually have experience with
which are made of brass are much stronger --- plumbing, doorknobs, etc; you
really have to experience one in person to feel the thinness of the material
(and they're already pretty heavy, which makes them even more fragile.)

~~~
jacquesm
You can wreck a saxophone (ok, technically a woodwind) by putting it down
uncarefully. They are all quite fragile.

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jandrese
Wow, that looks like a shit ton of work for $300. The pictures make it look
like it takes hours and dozens of specialized tools.

~~~
camtarn
Yeah, I thought that too. I feel like they're charging a lot less than what
their labour, expertise and tools really should be worth; but presumably the
price is set there because that's what the market will bear and/or that's what
their competitors charge.

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analog31
Unfortunately, the clientle isn't swimming in money. I play the double bass,
and was visiting my repair shop. The luthier was showing me the instruments he
was working on, and each story ended with: "Of course the customer doesn't
have any money."

He has no competitors. Good instrument repair technicians are pretty rare.
These guys could be making a lot more money repairing things like high-tech
medical equipment.

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wallflower
Interesting. My initial thought was that it was the old article about
repairing dents in a brass wind instrument with a super strong rare earth
magnet.

[https://www.supermagnete.de/eng/Magnet-
applications/Straight...](https://www.supermagnete.de/eng/Magnet-
applications/Straightening-out-brass-instruments)

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equalunique
I'm no music expert, but as someone who has tried and failed to straighten out
numerous metal objects, I can definitely appreciate this detailed guide.

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jugg1es
Loads so fast. I miss you, Internet.

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mymythisisthis
I miss the old Internet, web 1.0. Great web-page!

~~~
graycat
I bet the good old stuff, and a lot more good stuff, safe for work, families,
and children, is still out there. Sooo, look for my announcement on HN of my
alpha test!

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3xblah
Based on 1st 4 comments on this thread, readers might like:

[https://wiby.me](https://wiby.me)

[https://wiby.me/submit/](https://wiby.me/submit/)

~~~
dTal
Not sure why this got killed - it's an extremely relevant comment that I was
about to make myself.

Context: This site was linked in a comment the other day in the "Lesser-Known
Search Engines That Are Worth Checking Out" thread [1]. It's a search engine
for "old internet" style sites such as this one, and the S/N ratio is so high
they even have a "surprise me" button that more often than not gets you
something interesting.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19350679](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19350679)

~~~
3xblah
I saw it mentioned on HN at least 12 mos ago. What is the story behind it?
Does not appear to use Google or Bing.

In a way, it has the effect of being something like "AMP" before that project
was started: a way to encourage or filter for smaller, faster webpages (but
even better, without the injected advertising).

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Animats
The amount of work spent straightening straight brass tubing seems excessive.
You'd think they'd just replace the straight parts, and consider them
consumables, like strings.

~~~
userbinator
I think it says a lot about how the musical instrument industry works --- you
_can_ buy the tubes, but they're not that cheap, possibly because they're not
made in large quantities:

[http://www.jlsmithco.com/tubing-and-pipes](http://www.jlsmithco.com/tubing-
and-pipes)

On the other hand, if you don't restrict your search to "instrument-oriented"
suppliers...

[https://www.amazon.com/Precision-Metals-9115-Thickness-
Lengt...](https://www.amazon.com/Precision-Metals-9115-Thickness-
Length/dp/B07DR9J2M1)

Now I wonder if anyone has made a trombone (or other brass instrument) from
plumbing supplies. That would be more in line with the "hacker spirit"!

~~~
Rebelgecko
There's some Youtube videos[1] of people that made trombones out of PVC pipes.
However they have a tendency to sound awful and have awful slides. However
there is the P-Bone, which is made almost entirely out of plastic while still
being a decent trombone[2]

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxVSP0hcL8s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxVSP0hcL8s)

[2]: [https://pbone.co.uk/](https://pbone.co.uk/) I think the only non-plastic
bits are the spring and a cotter pin that make the spit valve work

