Piston casings made of nickel silver

[bububassboner]

Hello everyone,
I've been thinking for awhile now about making piston valve casings out of nickel silver. I've seen rotor valve casings made out of nickel but I've never seen a piston valve casing made out of solid nickel silver. Other than the fact it would be harder to machine than brass is there any reason why you couldn't/shouldn't?

My thought is that nickel casings would wear down slower than brass casings and resist denting a little better then brass. So I'm hoping for the valves to need to be rebuilt less often and possibly have less sticking issues due to little bumps the horn might get.

What do you all think?

[roweenie]

I wouldn't know for sure, but is it possible that machining nickel silver might present some difficulties not present with brass, or maybe there is an advantage to having two different metals coming into contact with such tight tolerances?

I doubt that cost is a factor.

I've got to assume that if it were feasible, it would have been done by now...

[bububassboner]

I was thinking about matching these up with stainless steel valves so the two different metals isn't a thing anyways. I just know that bending it is a lot harder so I assume it just takes longer to machine. Has any company done this before? I've seen miraphone rotor casings in nickel, just never piston casings in nickel.

[opus37]

My 1912 Martin had nickel silver valves. They lasted a long time. I have since had Lee Stofer get them rebuilt at Andersons.

[Ken Crawford]

Here is the real question: Why are valves and casings built from soft materials anyways? Stainless casings would never wear out. Aluminum casings and valves would be awesome, easily machined, corrosion resistant, harder to dent than nickel silver or brass, super light and hard enough to never wear out. Maybe instrument manufacturers won't try anything like that because that just isn't how its done...Stick with the 150 year old technology.

[Ken Crawford]

The tremendous outlay of cash needed to tool up and then do prototyping would *never* be made up by sales of horns. No one will every do this unless they are a master builder setting up their own shop for the very first time with all new equipment and tools. I know of no master builders who do not already own a full shop of tools, and not many have the needed engineering and computer backgrounds needed for such work. It would have to initially be a labor of love, and these guys want to eat and to wear underwear devoid of holes and stains. So: nope.

Just to tool up a small but "complete" shop for one guy who does both woodwind and brass repair would currently run you over $30,000 if you start from scratch. The brass stuff is over $20,000 and the WW stuff prices out at about $10,000. The mills, lathes and CAD gear needed to make good valves and then research and tweak the designs until you are really happy with what you have are a good bit more than that. Working in different metals requires different techniques and tools; even more money.

It is a financial pit to stray far from the established path of "this works well" as funded and researched by large companies like Conn did in the middle of the 20th century. They were massively large for what we do, and they paid for and performed tons of acoustical and materials research that everyone feeds off of today, whether they know it or not. It would take a company like that to roll out something like stainless or aluminum casing sets with pistons that do not suffer from galvanic corrosion or whatever.

Yeah, you could do this, but it is not a financially inviting proposition for any company looking to make a buck over any other consideration, such as today's companies. Research is mostly out. Copying is in. Budget, budget, budget!

An instrument manufacturer could easily outsource the machining work of building valves and casings to an established machine shop. No need to invest in all new machines and technology. Most industries that produce complex final products rely on job shops to produce individual components. Maybe it wouldn't work, but who knows?

[tubarepair]

It's not in the manufacturer's best interest to make an instrument that never wears out...