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Has anybody considered replating their own valves, like with one of the kits you can get from Caswell's? And then having your local tech hone and lap them in?

harold wrote:Won't work. If you have all of the skills required for the correct preparation of the valve prior to replating, you won't need an expert to lap them into fit.

As far as the kits are concerned, they won't give you enough metal to properly lap - unless there is some do-it-yourself electroplatiing system that I haven't heard of.

So you don't think a gallon-and-a-half kit will do?

http://www.caswellplating.com/kits/copper.htm

Well, they do sell 20 gallon kits...

Seems to me that someone on this BBS did plate up some of his valves with silver with good success, but only to improve things, not to make them "like new".

http://cgi.ebay.com/Silver-plating-repl ... dZViewItem

I probably won't, but that was my line of thinking: @$30, five minutes in the drink, get a thousandth or two of nickel on the first valve and polish it when it comes out to keep it going for another year before having the whole valve block redone, as Ab to Bb below the staff and a couple of others are starting to crack badly, and it's not all my embouchure.

OK, now that I've clarified and narrowed the application, any more thoughts?

I've done a little plating... mostly about 20 years ago. I could probably rig up my old stuff to do some piston replating... but I can't imagine messing with it for what little it costs to have Dave Seigrist at Anderson Silver Plating do a masterful job of it. The trick with piston rebuilding isn't the nickel, anyway... it's the build-up of the copper necessary to get rid of the imperfections and make the piston round again. Once the copper is applied, the piston is precision-ground and only after the piston is ever so smaller than the finished size is to be the nickel is applied. The nickel is actually very thin... less than .001"... but very hard. It's an art. Not something that anyone should be trying to do without lots of experience.

An old Eastwood quote comes to mind: "A man has got to know his limitations." Thanks.

harold wrote:

iiipopes wrote:An old Eastwood quote comes to mind: "A man has got to know his limitations." Thanks.

I believe the actual quote is "Some men just don't know their limitations" which may be even more appropriate.

Harold, that includes all of us:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imCzx-bqrY4

Then again, since we're on the topic of plating valves, if you're going to do the whole valve block properly with someone like Anderson with all their experience and well-deserved reputation, once we've done the usual customary method sending it out to be rounded, then plated with copper to bring up the diameter, then re-rounded, then plated with nickel for the hardness, then honed, why not, before the last step of lapping the valve into place, have it finally plated with hexagonal boron nitride as a bearing coating?

http://www.bornitrid.com/boron_nitride_coating.html
http://www.accuratus.com/boron.html
http://www.azom.com/details.asp?ArticleID=78
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boron_nitride (the hexagonal section)
http://www.caswellplating.com/kits/bnen.html

harold wrote: I've had several valve blocks replated, but they've had decades of use on them before I aquired the horn. Wouldn't this seem to indicate that whatever process is currently being used is going to be sufficient for the typical tubist?

In a word, Yes.


I personally think that those who claim to have replated valves in a glass beaker with good results had fairly low expectations. Decorative plate work with silver or gold and even copper and nickel can be done with the kit or bench top methods, I use them all the time. But what you are talking about here is structural/ dimensional plating and that is a whole different can of worms.

Plating valve pistons is so much more involved then dipping the pistons in a five gallon bucket of sulphate. I've rebuilt enough valves to say that short of doing it correctly and thoroughly you are wasting your time and money. Tinker is correct about the copper plate being more important; when I work with my local platers, there is a lot of special applications employed to clean the substrate in order to achieve a proper molecular bond between the copper and base metal (not as easy as you may think). Some of the cleaning is done with chemicals that will burn the crap out of your skin (not the kind of stuff you want in your home) plus, for every one of these steps you need a distilled water rinse tank and for some you need a deactivating bath. The process is very involved and building a few thousandths takes a bit more then five minutes. If not correctly prepared the plate will peel right off the piston during the external honing process. Every build up of copper takes my plater about 1.5 hours, depositing about .008' between the ports, .010''- .014'' at the ends. The amount of copper we add is enough to level the walls and build the piston up to address the void created between the piston and cylinder. In order to achieve the proper fit, the copper plating may need to be done two to five times with honing between platings. Once coppered and honed to the point it is the proper diameter, I will undersize the piston .004'' to allow the clearance for the nickel plate. The final nickel plate after honing is .002'' thick (.004'' overall O.D.) 50-55 minutes in the nickel bath will put .006''-.008'' which will be honed to the final dimension (.0075''-.001'' O.D. undersize of the cylinder I.D). If the pistons are really bad, don't kid yourself, so are the cylinders and they will need to be honed oversize until they are strait and round. Honing the cylinders enlarges the void even more so and that means more copper.

Another thing to note is that the plating is only one part of a really complicated process. The stuff you need to fit the valves include proper measuring tools like high precision micrometers (.00005'') and bore gages in addition to the proper external honing apparatus as well as a properly tooled honing machine and the knowhow to use it.

Yeah, you can try to do it with one of the mail order kits. You will need more stuff including a proper rectifier and anodes not to mention the other chemicals and tanks, but trust me, it wont be worth the trouble or expense and in the end it simply won't work as well as sending it out to be done properly.

If you still feel compelled to try it, take a glance at this page of images showing the process of rebuilding tuba valves and what is involved then you can visualize what you are up against. Feel free to pm me if you have questions.


http://www.oberloh.com/gallery/tubavalvereferbish.htm

Daniel C. Oberloh
Oberloh Woodwind and Brass Works
www.oberloh.com

I will never be crafty enough to attempt replating my own valves. but when I spot a post from Daniel C. Oberloh, Bloke or Tinker, I have to punch in and see what they have to say.
Pure gold.

With all of my experience as a shade-tree tuba mechanic (and I have done a lot of stuff that others said should be left to the pros!) I would never try to replate valves.
...never again, anyway.

You all misread the second post after the Eastwood quote.

I asked what about having the final .0002 or so coat of boron nitride at the end of the usual conventional plating process, and I specified the bearing surface version of hexagonal BN, not either of the other two forms, cubic or amorphous, then gave a few industrial links so all the readers would know what BN plating was.

The purpose of the Eastwood quote was, of course, to end the discussion on doing it yourself.

Now, can we please pick up the discussion from where I left off?

As the final step of the conventional process of sending your valves out to be plated, what about using hexagonal BH, a very good and hard commercial bearing plating, as the final after the last nickel coat?

BTW: Caswell replied to an email on the subject and said they had not plated tuba valves before, but it sounded like a good idea to them (well, of course it would!) but more importantly, they said there was less toxicity with the process than there is with brass.

I don't know. Caswell doesn't appear to have any examples or customers with stories to relate.

Some searching on finishing.com doesn't come up with much other than electroless+BN as a mold release coating, much the same way that teflon and SiC are incorporated into electroless coatings.

It's hard to say if a BN+electroless plating would improve valve action or not.

Try it, and let us know how it works!

iiipopes wrote:You all misread the second post after the Eastwood quote.

I asked what about having the final .0002 or so coat of boron nitride at the end of the usual conventional plating process

I didn't misread your post. I just ignored the suggestion about the boron nitride coating. This might be fun to try but I seriously doubt if it would be worth the effort and expense. The use of disimilar metals could be good or bad... depending on how the experiment goes. The real key is the lubricant that is used. It's always been my opinion that even brass on brass works just fine as long as a lubricant film is always present.

Well, with all due respect, that's exactly why I did post. Yes, good copper, then rerounding, then replating, then honing, then nickel replating honed and lapped properly by a craftsman is the current state of the art in valve rebuilding, and it has served well for decades.

But with time you either progress or die. Is there anybody besides me out there who is willing to innovate, and I don't mean just dressing up an old tuba design with a new garland, so as not to risk becoming as anachronistic as string players?

I appreciate conventional designs. They work well. If they didn't, they would not have become the convention. But every idea and every way of doing things was new at some point, and to fall into the sludge of self-contentment of, "We've always done it that way," is to go ahead and bury yourself while you're still alive.

Learn from the past, discard the trash, hang on to what's proven its worth, and INNOVATE! Not all new ideas are going to be good. This one may not be, either, but I'm willing to post it as a thread, for as to quote Arthur C. Clarke out of 2001: A Space Oddessey, "Where a million failures wouldn't matter, one success could change the course of destiny."

Then again, we coula all go back to playing ophicliedes and sarrousaphones, but except to reinact a period piece to appreciate how far we've come and remind ourselves how far we have to go, I'll pass.

I respectfully submit that you are submitting your request to the wrong people here, iiipopes...

Reengineering people rightfully belong on the staffs of the manufacurers, not the reconstruction people with whom you are having the conversation.

Nor do I hear anyone maintaining that "we could all go back to playing ophicliedes and sarrousaphones". (although I found playing ophicleides a strangely satisfying and enjoyable experience, and suggest that we could learn, too, from not just honking on them, but by discovering many of the LOST techniques used in high level performances with these beasts)

Not necessarily regarding this idea, which may not be a good one, but on others I have submitted them. One of my ideas is being considered as we speak by a Chinese firm trying to improve their tubas. It may not be a good idea either, but at least they are listening to it to see if it is.

Good ideas oft times come from the players who have to deal with the instruments on the playing end of things. That's why brass instruments have triggers, saddles, rings, etc. on the slides. The ideas came from the players first, as well as the people on the floor assembling the instruments for better ways to do it or from the engineers who look into such things, or even from the owners, such as V Bach himself having to figure out in a hurry what he was going to do about his mouthpiece being ruined by another person trying to "improve" it.

Bad ideas also come from players, because they're players, not necessarily engineers. But even the bad ideas can lead to other good ideas once their shortcomings are thought through properly as to what aspects need to be addressed that are not addressed by the original idea.

The rant isn't over whether or not BN plating is a good idea, nor who should hear about it. Unless everybody hears it and has their input, then it can't be tested as to whether it's a good idea or not. The rant is about being summarily dismissed in a place that's supposed to hear and air out the ideas.

Whether me or anybody else, at least if you are going to disagree, and I expect people to disagree or I would not have posted, do so with objectivity and rationality. I appreciated TubaTinker's post before the Eastwood quote, because it set forth the lessons learned from great experience succinctly, and by the opportunity to learn by reading such experience and heeding the advice I refrained from a big mistake of trying to do a "patch" job myself. For that, a hearty thank you so I don't risk damaging my tuba.

A forum is never the wrong place to air new ideas. That's absurd, and goes against the purpose and origin of the word "forum." Thank goodness Sean has this forum to do just that. Maybe a particular thread may be the better vehicle to air the thread, and if this is the wrong thread, then my apologies and my request to Sean to split it out to a separate thread including other progressive ideas in valves, since the current state of the art of valve manufacture is at a plateau, and has been for a couple of generations.

And finally, please accept my sincerity that all my ideas, rants, quotes, and posts are meant singularly for the purpose of betterment of tubas and tubists generally, as is this forum.

Thank you.

Sincerity accepted!!