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I just wanted to know if there was anywhere in the mid-michigan area that does (good) lacquer stripping.

Anyone with raw-brass horns wanna tell me yay or nay to having raw brass......

The lacquer on my comp & my 186 has been stripped the old-fashioned way: 30+ years of hard treatment, use and abuse, before I purchased them.

haha.......

Hi-
You can do it yourself--use 'Aircraft Removal' (a lacquer stripper--you can buy at some auto stores)--works great, but do it in a ventilated area and you MUST wear goggles and gloves--it is strong stuff--much stronger than 'Zip-Strip.'

Regards-
mark
jonestuba@juno.com

Someone told me that just really hot HOT water will do it.

Although I'm not sure I'd trust myself to do it - better to pay someone with the good chemicals to do it for me!

Hate to be this guy, but I've heard really hot water won't do it. And several people in the brass area at my school tried it and it doesn't work. In the words of one trombonist, "I used HOT HOT water, and soap...in the end, it was just shiny".

He used a chemical cleaner that took it off, but it was an old can he found and no other can he bought had the effect to strip. Plus, I feel like it was be too difficult to get all the lacquer off myself or that I may get some inside the horn and who knows what that would do...so a professional is what I'm after. (especially since I want to get a cleaning and some valve work done)

What sort of maintenance is required of an all brass horn...I mean, how much time would have to be spent polishing. And is there a finish that I can apply myself which will reduce the time that the brass begins to get ugly..

you can go to your local auto parts store and buy some lacquer thinner. I would say a 1 gallon jug would cost $5.00-7.00. Use that and a rag and the finish should lift right off. The aircraft lacquer remover would work great as well but that stuff can burn your skin and cause an array of other issues, the lacquer thinner wouldn't cause as many issues IMO, but either way you should always follow the precautions on the can. A guy at my school did this and his horn turned out really well.

anyone wanna post a pic of their raw brass horns??

Does it leave your hands smelling of metal?

I know brass is toxic to ingest, but has anyone had any experience with reactions on your skin? I can't get any sort of allergin testing done, and I played a nickel horn for 2 years getting rashes before figuring out that I am allergic to nickel....I don't wanna do that with brass...haha

I played unlacquered horns for years as a horn player, and I never polished it, it isn't necessary. It developes a natural patena ( sp?) that, at least to me, looks good.

I know for a fact that if you leave a Besson 2-20 trumpet in a hot, soapy bath overnight trying to get it extra clean, it will take all of the lacquer off the horn.

wow........

I have never heard of hot water doing this, but I am sure it has to do with lacquer thickness, quality and manafacturer...etc.

....

pierso20 wrote:wow........ I have never heard of hot water doing this, but I am sure it has to do with lacquer thickness, quality and manafacturer...etc. ....

I've heard of hot water lifting off lacquer but I've never experienced it. Hot water sure doesn't work on most of the stuff that I strip. There are several types of lacquers out there: most are simple air-dry lacquers... some are two-part epoxies... and then there is the dreaded 'Eastlake Orange' stuff that fire won't remove. The latter stuff takes caustics to get it off.

At the college I went to, the OLD sousaphones were 1946 model 20k's. All in raw brass with very few patches of lacquer left. Everyday after practice my hands would be green and smell VERY bad. But just dont sweat while your playing it and you shouln't have that problem

Hot water will soften the nitrocellulose based lacquer that was typically used on older instruments (Dave Werden mentions accidentally removing the lacquer off an old Besson by soaking it too long), but will not affect the epoxy lacquers that are currently being used.

When I stripped the lacquer from my Marzan, I used Zip-Strip (so that I could control where) and only removed back to the 4th valve. Then I washed it down in alcohol.

One thing I will caution you if you're doing this for sonic reasons. I swore that I could hear a difference in the bell vibrating, and perhaps there is a localized effect, but friends told me that it didn't make it out into the hall.

So now I'm thinking why risk all the white shirts?

Thanks Elephant...that's more of the kind of advice that helps me.

See.....I'm not sure how old my horn is. It is a 1290...so I'm assuming it's not recent..haha

The thing for me is, it is missing a GOOOD amount of the lacquer already and scratched too. It is really for a cosmetic thing for me.

Another thing to consider is, would a horn fetch more (or be more saleable) with tons of beat up lacquer, or a nice polished up raw brass?? Because I will want to sell this horn in the future as well.....

the elephant wrote:I then (stupidly) stripped another tuba with lacquer that was in excellent shape and less than 20 years old. It made zero difference, even in feel.

Lacquer has changed as have the methods to apply it. Stripping a new horn would be foolish. Stripping an old one needs to be considered and then reconsidered and the thought about once again. Think about this for about a YEAR before doing a modification that will cost HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS to un-do and will involve massive buffing (read: thinning) of the walls of your tuba. If you want to get a horn silver plated it needs to be a very thick horn to start with or you need to just buy one that has factory silver plate, because the same stripping/buffing process will be applied to it.

FWIW, there is a good reason pierso20 wants to strip the 1290. My wife did extensive "dent work" on that horn a few years ago. I had Lee Stofer more or less rebuild it, BUT told him to not spend any attention on cosmetics. After the extent of work done, the horn has a very uneven finish. However, Lee's work did wonders for the playing and sound of the horn, a reasonable tradeoff.