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Here's a couple of pics of my latest work on the cimbassi. This one's in F with 4 + 1 valve set up. Bore is .687/.689". Plays and sounds great. I'll have it with me at the Friday sessions of the ITEA Mid-west conference. Come and see for yourself.
Sam Gnagey

Looks great, Sam!

Is that a baritone bell and large branches on it?

Do you have some sort of design guide? What would a cimbasso in BBb look like? Larger bell and branches, maybe?

I have often yearned for a valve bone with a slide.Bloke's " wacky project" sounds really wonderful to me

Marching baritone. That's what we call 'em.

I must give credit to a couple of people who have helped immensly with this project: Deb Lahr has done wonders with designing and constructing the linkages for the 5th valves on most of my recent horns. She's a great tech with fine training from Red Wing and about 19 years experience.
And Pat Nash who's lent a critical eye and undertaken some buffing work to improve appearance. He's also a great technician. We're working on getting a web site up and running.
We're very lucky here in Fort Wayne to have them as a resource.

It looks like you've figured out what most of the component parts of this horn are.
My plans for the valve sections are to make up some ersatz OTS tenor horns. I thought all of the originals were rotary valve, but after seeing some pictures in the "Tuba Views" book I know there were piston horns then also. So these will be sort of authentic.

Funny, this isn't all THAT different from the "ergonomic tuba" that so many people were barfing at...yeah the bell points forward but some of the general ideas are the same.
MA

Sam Gnagney brought his new F Cimbasso to my recent clinic in Bowling Green.

I've played a lot of cimbassos---The horn really plays well!!

Jim

Thanks, Jim.
You played it before we made some significant modifications to the bell section. I wasn't completely happy with the pitch tendencies, so we tore the bell section apart and shortened it up. It was the same section that I'd developed for the Eb, and I thought they'd be pretty much interchangeable. I was wrong. The F bugle needed to be about 17cm shorter. This works a lot better.