Conn 11J

[bloke]

These were 3-valve front-action California Olds-made tubas - engraved "Conn" and with sorta Conn-lookin' brace feet (before Conn started making tubas again after their big move from Elkhart).

The 11J featured circular band of brass just below the bell flair (same as with the Reynolds TB-10 version of the Olds O-99).

A band director is paying me a good bit of money to bring one back ("dusty high shelf") from the dead and supply a case for it.

(Tubas cost a bunch, these days.)

It was missing pistons #'s 1 and 3, caps, buttons, etc...

The entire tuba is trashed and all the slides are stuck.

it's sorta halfway "shiny".

@arpthark was very nice to me and sold me some of those "Bach"-era pistons (which don't fit, but can be made to fit.
The Bach pistons are identical YET .002" larger in diameter (which I believe was a strategy by Conn-Selmer to discourage people from buying their pistons to repair Olds and Reynolds tubas).

I NEVER do this, but - in this thread - I'm going to post some "BEFORE" pics, so y'all can laugh.

I worked pretty hard out in the shop today (Bach 42 playing slide tubes replacement and refinish...Jupiter 4-valve sousaphone with a zillion busted braces, misc., plus at the computer invoicing/quoting/etc.), don't feel like going back out there, right now, and tuba pictures are best when taken outdoors in overcast light...It's nearly 7 P.M. and the sun has already gone down.

[Grumpikins]

Talking about taking valves down to fit, what is the standard gap between piston and casing?

[bloke]

Talking about taking valves down to fit, what is the standard gap between piston and casing?

I'm opening up these casings to fit the pistons. If I took the pistons down, I would go through the nickel plating on them.
It's generally considered acceptable for the space all the way around a piston - between a piston and its casing - to be c. .0005"
(in other words, .001" difference).

Those huge short action pistons need more space, because there's so much surface area. With only .0005" all the way around with those huge valves, even thin valve oil will slow them down or even stop them.

[bloke]

The several times I walked out to the shop today, I forgot to grab my phone to take pictures of that beat to crap tuba.

I don't take my phone out there normally...

[Grumpikins]

Thank you. The pistons on my little eb are not plated and I have been contemplating sending them for it. I havent taken any measurements yet. Just something I have been thinking about.

[bloke]

Thank you. The pistons on my little eb are not plated and I have been contemplating sending them for it. I havent taken any measurements yet. Just something I have been thinking about.

If you have some old unplated nickel brass pistons that only have a little light pitting on them and offer a good vacuum release, just make sure you all them every single time you play, and they should be fine, even if they tarnish to brown. (Just keep oiling them every time you play and let that brown tarnish get polished smooth from use.)

[arpthark]

just make sure you all them every single time you play

Memphis voice to text?

In Kentucky, that’d be “ohll.”

[bloke]

I really do try to say words such as "oil" clearly, but sometimes voice texting assumes things related to likelihood, whereby the first thing it types is the word uttered, but then it changes it to a more likely word in front of one's eyes.
I believe its AI type of brain assumes a more common word rather than a less common word, ignoring context and logic. This is one reason that AI frightens a lot of us.
I have a lot of the pronunciation and annunciation tendencies of my local peers obviously, but I was raised in a home of a native Kansan and a native Iowan.
(100% of the previous was voice texted, and when I said "Iowan" the first time, it typed that first, but then decided to change it to "island" and the second time it decided on "I'll win".)

It's nearly impossible to get voice texting to type the word "were", and it always capitalizes "Pistons", because it assumes it's listening to some idiot talk about spectator sports.

[bloke]

[York-aholic]

If you haven’t got around to making pistons fit casings (or vice versa) I have an Olds O99 #1 or #3 piston (can’t remember which at the moment) that needs a home.

[bloke]

@York-aholic

The third casing has already been opened up the .0015" to fit a Bach valve, but if you have a #1 O-99, I'd like to BUY it. It would be a whole lot less trouble than what I've done with #3' casing.

[BopEuph]

Is that bell even salvageable? I was always under the impression that those brass bands meant the bell flare had been grafted onto a previously-destroyed horn. I guess that means it makes it easier to hide it if you need to swap out a bell flare.

Can't wait to see the after pics!

[bloke]

Is that bell even salvageable? I was always under the impression that those brass bands meant the bell flare had been grafted onto a previously-destroyed horn. I guess that means it makes it easier to hide it if you need to swap out a bell flare.

Can't wait to see the after pics!

I think it's fixable.
I have a Bach bass trombone to work on (to complete a set of six trombone repairs for a college with a nice fat check burning a hole in their pocket right now), and I just finished (this morning before my first coffee) a Benge trumpet for someone to whom it was hard to say no, so I went ahead and agreed to re-lacquer it for them, even though it really didn't need it. It was one of those that still looked like it was made in Chicago, Los Angeles, or Fullerton, but it was actually made (same tooling and specs) in Eastlake by King.

After I finish with that last bass trombone for that college, I'm going to do this made-by-Olds Conn tuba, because it goes back to the same town (a couple of hours away) where I'm playing a John Williams pops concert next month. It's going to have to go on next fiscal year's money (I brought so many of their instruments back from the dead this year, that they're out of dough), so we probably won't be paid until mid to late August, but at least it won't be part of my summer repairs, since I already have it done. (I don't like repairs that take a whole bunch of hours creating log jams in the summer when all those other things are here to be fixed before mid-July's band camps.)

After the Olds-Conn 11J, I've got a really screwed up 186 (wealthy private Catholic boys school) that needs $2,700 worth of work, and they're going to have to pay the same way - after July 1st...spent out (for now) as well.

[bloke]

I got this stuff done last night.
- horrible bell flair straightened out with rim close to planar
- severely stuck slides all extracted

I've got the third casing about half to two-thirds of the way to fitting these larger "Bach" pistons... This is going to take time.

[bloke]

I don't think I'm going to finish this in time to get it to that school on this trip to play that concert.
Today I got the oversized Bach #1 and #3 pistons fitting in the casings.
I straightened the bell FLAIR first, so the instrument would sit on the floor while I was working on it, but I wasn't interested in removing the other dents until I had a tuba, and - without valves - there's no tuba.

[bloke]

I got the two oversized Bach valves (#1 and #3) fitted to the first and third casings, I got some King valve stems retrofitted onto those pistons - which are much more durable than Olds stems - which tend to strip out when trying to use them for lapping valves into casings.
I got the original #2 piston and its messed up casing both straightened out and functioning.
This stuff was difficult, and was not rewarding, but now I'm ready to go on and address the slides fitting into the valve section properly and easily, and then I'll remove the large dents from the outside body sections and call this thing done.
I can't have tedious jobs like this extending into the summer when I'm trying to go through hundreds of repairs before the high school and university band camps, as well as the first day of school for the middle schools.
Again, I won't be paid for this one until July or August but at least it will be done. There's a more extensive 186 rescue repair/restoration to do also before the summer rush hits, which is very very soon. That one will also be paid for out of that schools 2026-2027 budget.
Whatever.

[bloke]

I've got the valves completely assembled with springs and they all work very smoothly with no oil yet are quite resistant to blow by... I don't have any of the proper tools to do what I did and did all this stuff by abusing repair tools rather than using machine tools. It was hard and I had to be very careful.

I made some progress on the slides, but it's time to head off and play my gig.

[bloke]

I feel like I'm going to be finishing up with this instrument, tomorrow.

All this stuff (pictured) was the hard stuff - the stuff that I tend to suspect that only a few handfuls of blokes can do well -
and without taking a month to get it done.

What you're seeing here was formerly a hot mess, in absolutely every regard.

Though admittedly things weren't as they should have been, I suspect that the fact that the lower #3 outside slide tubes were out of parallel by a tenth of an inch was an Olds factory (though it stunk, not olfactory) issue, and not a damage issue. ie...

Since we're making this with Conn's name on it, let's just get the sh!t out the door and get the money, as this is interfering with our own production.

(I tend to suspect ?)

The piston to port alignment would surely satisfy the pickiest players, and - likely - even the pickiest of so-called "techs".

The upper #1 and number #3 alignment was also laughable (as it always was with the Olds O-99 and Reynolds TB-10), but now are operable on the fly, though - since this is a school instrument - not loose enough to fall on the floor when the instrument is rested on its bell.

All of this required removing and reinstalling braces. Otherwise, all that work I did on the valve casings and pistons would have been put under stress and would have been time wasted.



...They would have been thrilled with a good bit less, but who knows who's going to see it...,?? maybe even one of those Facebook super-techs - who show off how well they can replace spit keys.

all of those epic body dents seen in the original post:
I can do that stuff in my sleep with blinders on.
This instrument is done, other than the doing of it.

I really do NOT wish to re-lacquer that bell flare. (Who would?), but it's not that much surface area, this lacquer seems to be pretty soft (look on the valve section and see how easily it burns. You know that I don't overheat stuff), and it's got that Reynolds-style ring that's a nice stopping place on the outside, so I'll probably go ahead and do that as well.

This is a fairly new school customer, and - having already seen what I could do for other of their old trash horns (but also word of mouth) - I'm trying to solidly lock them in, because they're fairly far away.

[bloke]

It's not quite finished.

(I have to solder the ribs back on the outer bows and touch up some burned lacquer)
but it plays, and damn well, I might add.

I'll probably post a picture or two and maybe a little Imgur reel-ette.

[bloke]

It's done, but I haven't cleaned up all the solder joints nor have I yet polished all the burned lacquer around soldered areas.

I saw where I forgot to solder the cross brace on the main slide and took care of that. Afterward, the number three valve started intermittently sticking, so released tension on the solder joints leading into the number three casing knuckles, which did the trick.
Hey, at least I didn't warble that number three casing out so large that there was no way a valve was going to stick in there.

All three valves offer a decent vacuum release - including the badly damaged original second piston and casing, and the two oversized Bach valves, whereby I had to open up casings numbers one and three by a good bit to fit those valves into them...and without any of the proper honing tools - only via abusing "repair" tools to accomplish this.

Tomorrow, I'll clean it up, post two or three stills, and maybe an F or B flat major scale or something.

LOL...
This was a pretty ridiculous repair.