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My early Holton is being overhauled. The finishing touch would be to have it newly silver-plated. The instrument must have been produced with a "frosted/satin silver" finish.
Can someone explain to me, how this was/is done?
And how to clean the satin silver without rubbing it off or polishing it to shine??
Thanks a lot for your advice,
Hubert.

Bloke, thanks a lot for the explanation and hints.
Hubert

Joe, this topic has been up among us around my two almost 80 years old Conn sousaphones.

I am too lazy to chase your old posting. However my recalling is, that you told, that Conn didn’t sandblast the raw brass body. They didn’t even polish it smooth. They just silvered it so generously on top of the raw brass, that these instruments in their now much older incarnations look as if they are polished-down-but-originally-sandblasted.

The 40K is gold plated on top of the silver plating. It has some funny colours. In some places scratches have taken the surface down to raw brass, in other places just down to raw silver. The gold layer probably never was very thick, and the over-zealous polishing by former proud owners has thinned it furthermore, so the silver shines through very much resulting in a quite whitish gold colour.

To the original poster: I have two British frosted-silver instruments: a B&H Imperial Brit style baritone from 1967 (the instrument I have owned the longest period) and a 1970 Besson New Standard BBb 3+1 comper.

In 1967 I was on a band tour to Liverpool playing as well in the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Hall and at a week-long combined military display and live-stock show (oh these Shire-horses!).

I polished the baritone during the stay. The results on my white band uniform were disastrous, but the wife of my host family did wonders in cleaning it up.

Since then I have refused to polish it. It tends to get black, but much of that look is plain dirt. My remedy for cleaning it is pretty simple: I rub it with a soft cotton cloth drenched in thin valve oil. Then I rub it with a dry cloth of the same type.

That instrument has been around. I also have played it in the Royal Albert Hall, in Norway, and in the most prestigious halls of Copenhagen. I don’t know how I dared, but I have lent it to several of my students, often having great problems in getting it back again. They just loved it

In 1993 I subbed on bassbone on a tour through Eastern Europe down to the Bulgarian coast of the Black Sea. I didn’t like the sound and intonation of the baritone sitting in front of me, so I offered her to loan my Imp. It was on the same tour, where I didn’t like the intonation of the BBb bass and got him a much better loaner from one of my external resources. In both cases we had to threaten with turning the loaning persons in to the police to get the instruments back. Very bad style by the loaners towards helpful persons.

But at least the "imperialbari" has been around on a diminishing amount of silver polish and an increasing amount of oil.

Klaus Smedegaard Bjerre

PS: The Brit way of frosted silver was kind of interesting. First a plain silvering, then the sand blasting, and finally a second silvering.

That frosting approach done by the British provides a very smooth satin finish instead of the rougher sand-blasted appearance. The modern satin-finished instruments are very rough compared to the old ones, leading me to think they do the work faster with coarser beads. I prefer the older, smoother surface. But I probably wouldn't be willing to pay for it.

Rick "wondering if Bloke's color buff is just a coarse-blast workaround" Denney

"colorbuffing":

Please be forgiving towards a non-native English speaking person. I can’t visualise the technical process, even I am pretty much at home in repair shop procedures.

After all I probably am one of the few TubeNetters, who for longer periods have lived (sleeping, eating, and everything including bringing my dog) in a large brass and woodwind workshop. I did so while researching the history of that company before writing a booklet for its 2nd centenary in 1996. Since then I even have used the workshop as my holiday cabin during summers.

On the side: Old-fashioned craftsmanship has become extremely expensive. No blame on the people doing it, as they deserve a decent living. And downtown shops in metropolitan areas have to pay horrid rents, which is a fixed cost to be paid before the first cent is available for wages for the staff, let alone for a profit for the owner.

So I am happy about having sniffed-up the methods of doing the extended maintenance of the everyday problems of my brasses and woodwinds. I don’t do soldering and dent work, but I used to be a master in getting trombone slides and any type of valve mechanism running smoothly.

Such beautiful "extras" as the elaborate engravings of the older US brasses and the decorative bow guards of especially German trombones are items of yesteryear. They cannot be paid for today.

I have discussed the frosted silvering with highly ranking Besson/B&H staffers before that company went into shambles. They maintained, that the reason for leaving it out of the Sovereign series was, that symphony players didn’t want their instruments looking like military band instruments (in Denmark and the UK, and probably other countries also, the orchestras hired their brass extras from the residential bands). My cynicism rather counts the abandoning of frosted silvering as a cost cutting measurement.

Klaus Smedegaard Bjerre

hubert wrote:My early Holton is being overhauled. The finishing touch would be to have it newly silver-plated. The instrument must have been produced with a "frosted/satin silver" finish. Can someone explain to me, how this was/is done?

Check out these links to see how Dan Obeloh does it.

http://www.oberloh.com/gallery/connsax.htm
http://www.oberloh.com/martintuba/martintuba.htm

hubert wrote:And how to clean the satin silver without rubbing it off or polishing it to shine??

I asked Dan how to do it after I got my 1927 Conn 38K sousaphone. The finish was all original and the sousaphone had been in storage for almost 50 years. He said to use Twinkle silver polish, mix it with baking soda and use a natural fiber "platers brush" to clean the surface with a swirling motion. The really heavily tarnished areas took a while to clean, but a freshly plated horn would be no problem to keep clean. Using a rag the clean a satin surface will eventually "polish" the edge off of the satin finish and make it "shine" too much. My 38K came out looking great.

bloke wrote:Sandblasting really canNOT be done very easily at all a "spotty" manner. It either "is" or "is not".

But you can use 80 grit or 280 grit glass beads. The smaller beads will work more slowly, but create a smoother finish, right?

Rick "whose sandblasting is limited to rust and paint removal on Big Things" Denney

imperialbari wrote:"colorbuffing":

Please be forgiving towards a non-native English speaking person. I can’t visualise the technical process, even I am pretty much at home in repair shop procedures.

Color buffing is the last step in the buffing process, using rouge and a loose cotton wheel.

Rick "it's what comes after tripoli and compound" Denney

Rick Denney wrote:

imperialbari wrote:"colorbuffing":

Please be forgiving towards a non-native English speaking person. I can’t visualise the technical process, even I am pretty much at home in repair shop procedures.

Color buffing is the last step in the buffing process, using rouge and a loose cotton wheel.

Rick "it's what comes after tripoli and compound" Denney

Thank you for the information, Rick!

And no, you won’t get me started on how much I am against buffing and even worse: sanding! I even am against many types of dent repairs:

http://www.chisham.com/tips/bbs/aug2001 ... 66689.html

Klaus Smedegaard Bjerre

Bead blasting with 50 micron glass bead is the way it is done. I doubt that bead blasting was done on the silver plate itself as this would cause a higher number of rework jobs at the factory due to failure of the bond. I have bead blasted a lot of instruments and can tell you that if King was doing it after plating was done, some one had a lot of finish repairs to address before those horns made it out the door. If the blasted finish is color buffed prior to plate it will have a softer look. If it is color buffed after it is plated it will have a more rough texture but will still have a softer look then if it were plated and only silver cleaned.

Best regards,

Daniel C. Oberloh
Oberloh Woodwind and Brass Works
Seattle, WA
206.241.5767
www.oberloh.com

To polish a satin finish with a minimum amount of wear (just don't do it too much), try a paste of rottenstone and alcohol. Smear it on, wait for it to dry and then buff it off with a (clean) soft cloth.

It's messy, but gentle.

Simpler yet, send it to Anderson and have it chemically stripped. I have done this a number of times with tubas and have had no regrets.



Daniel C. Oberloh
Oberloh Woodwind and Brass Works
Seattle, WA
206.241.5767
www.oberloh.com

My last Army-issued sousaphone during my time in service was a Conn satin-silver sousaphone. We had to do that procedure Chuck was talking about every day. Our bare fingers would leave black fingerprints, no matter how clean they were. If we wore white gloves, they would turn black from the finish!

Of course, except for our section leader (who chose the finish), we would all rather have had it stripped!!!

Strippers at military parades?

Probably a novelty in most countries!

Klaus Smedegaard Bjerre

I was referring to having the finish stripped.

Guess that would be more decent than fiinishing the stripper!?

Klaus Smedegaard Bjerre