TubeNet

Valve alignment is important, and is also perceived being important. Just watch two current threads.

But how to do valve alignment on piston instruments?

Very few, if any tubas, have a wrapping which allows for visual control through all of the knuckles to check port-to-knuckle alignment. This certainly goes for instruments with top pistons.

The mirror method has been known to me since decades. I never practiced it myself, and hardly could do so today for eye reasons. It may be a speedy method for an experienced person. To me it always has appeared being a bit clumsy.

What about the cheaper Chinese endoscopes in the $300 price range? Any experiences?

Klaus Smedegaard Bjerre

bloke’s synthetic rings do not ad more weight to the moving parts of the valve. They may place the cut between lack of noise and longevity at another place than the Baer system causing a shorter lifespan. For somebody having quite a lot of non-standard valves to keep in working order, bloke’s approach is cheaper even is an endoscope should enter the equation. (The endoscope could also be interesting for other, brass related of course, matters).

And that endoscope appears more realistic to me than taking all these measurements. I can follow the math, but I don’t want to do it on basis of so many measurements, which shall be terribly exact, if faults shall not add up to a level, where the whole project looses its point. bloke can work fast and exact, I cannot do both. It is either or.

Klaus

Your experience has been gained by doing things often, and by applying the sense for 3 dimensional thinking, which you often have mentioned. I have some of that sense, but not your experience.

There is no way I would be able to control my attempts of an alignment without the endoscope. I hadn’t imagined using a camera, but rather putting the endoscope to my one somewhat useful eye.

To make things clear: I am not trying to teach anybody anything. My attempt is to find the best method for myself.

Klaus

boneman wrote: ...What makes the synthetic felts a "precision alignment" if it's just a felt that that is synthetic and one size fits most?

It is my understanding that Bloke does not claim these to be "Precision". I think the point of both of these mail-order alignments is that they will be at least within manufactures tolerances, and most importantly they will change very little over time thereby giving you consistency that you would not acheive with standard, factory issue felt felts.

I would try this myself if I still had a piston tuba, but it's rotaries for me (until a certain Midwestern Tinkerer of Tubas gives up a certain B&M-made piston instrument...)


Best of luck!
MF

search.php?author_id=2169&sr=posts

looks like an agenda.

Whether it serves it purpose?

Klaus

(Here was a call for a Readers Digest version of TN)

Klaus

Oy, you got intellect man! And you a tuba player?

K

Put this in the DIY category.

Pull the second valve slide and visually align the second valve by replacing corks and felts.

Remove the second valve.

Make an L-shaped tool from a coathanger. Stick it down the second valve casing and feel how close first and third valve travel is by feeling for misalignment in the valve ports. Place felts and corks as needed on the first and third valves. For a four-valve horn, remove the third valve and put the coathanger tool into that casing and adjust the fourth valve alignment.

However, these methods only check up and down movement, but not the rotational, angular position of a piston in its casing. The rotational, angular position is controlled by the slide key and guide, and I believe that a borescope would show whether the key and guide need adjustments, another topic.

Caveat: Used horns may have non-standard, perhaps dimensionally close (if you're lucky), replacements for the valve stems and fingerbuttons. The underside of a fingerbutton has to have proper clearance with the valve cap to permit the assembled valve to make a complete downstroke.

If you are unlucky, and the replacement parts and not close enough, no amount of adjustments by adding or removing felts and corks will give a correct alignment. You have to find correct length valve stems and finger buttons somewhere. Furthermore, a valve may have to be re-threaded to accept a proper length replacement valve stem, once you find it.

Hallelujah!

bloke wrote:I believe that molecular alignment, and magnetic/frequency/gravitational alignment are important considerations as well.

Very important matters, indeed! What about having them applied to your firewall, the outgoing one?

bloke wrote:Klaus,

Have you tried having your tubas treated via cryogenics, and then playing while using a Pocket Rocket? I considered trying both, but knew that I was not an accomplished enough player to be able to appreciate the results. Finally, though, I found this ! http://tinyurl.com/4eqvge

If you are not a sufficiently accomplished player, then who?

I am more related with geriatrics than with cryogenics? Were the last ice ages cryogenocides?

And I am fairly convinced that you would not be able to appreciate, if I put my pocket rocket onto your tubas for the dreaded pre-ammonia treatment.

The AcroustiCoils have some visual similarities to some heart valves of bovine origins for human after-market applications. To me the application of the AphroustiCoilitises in brasses is even less fertile than the application of all this bovine manure.

Pfft! This is almost as cryptogenic as politics!

K

What kind of 2 X 4 did you use, and how did you get the .90210 bore stabilized?

I WANT ONE!