The rebirth of a Holton 345 has started...

Daniel C. Oberloh · Post by **Daniel C. Oberloh** » Thu Jun 22, 2006 4:04 am

pulseczar wrote:That's some incredible work you do there Dan.

Thanks!

pulseczar wrote: So first you had the piston copper plated and then you used the tool thing to grind it down to fit the valve casing and then lapped it. Then you got it nickel plated then did the same procedure again. Is that right?

Yes, simply stated, that is what is going on, but at the risk of boring a few of the readers, let me add a little more info.

WARNING: technical information that is probably not even understood by its author.

The operation is called honing. The two machines used in my shop for the work are Sunnen hones. The white one is set up and used for internal honing only as it is quite new and very accurate. It will hold a tolerance of .0001'', .00005'' on a good day when I have not been out too late the night before. The grey one ''Old No. 1'' built in 1961 has been in my possession for quite awhile and was the machine I was originally trained on. I use it only for external honing on parts such as pistons and casing mandrels.

The process employs an external honing tool assembly; this tool has special silicon-carbide honing stones in one side and bronze guide shoes in the other. A special custom made arbor is used to fix the large piston into the machine. The oil used is a special sulphur based formula that aids in the honing process.

The precision set up tool is clamped around the piston and moderate pressure is applied on the piston while it is turning between the stones and shoes. The external hone is stroked back and forth; this slowly grinds down the high spots, trues and re-rounds the piston but also reduces its diameter. Because most of the big pistons I rebuild have rather nasty dents and at times are cracked or have holes in the ports, considerable effort is put into correcting them before we start the plating process. Once the piston is free of cracks and holes and is trued, we can start the process of building it up to the desired outside diameter so it will fit the cylinder accurately.

Shown above, the copper is electroplated onto the piston in thicknesses of .012''-.015'' +/-, it is then honed down until the piston is straight and cylindrical. The low areas such as pits and dents are reduced but not completely eliminated so the process is repeated, more copper, more honing. Eventually, the dents and pits are completely filled in with copper.

Once this has been achieved, the piston can be built up evenly and trued to the final desired size.
The piston is still a little undersize with respect to the cylinder but this is where we will finally nickel plate the piston and make up the difference. The nickel is plated to a thickness of .005''-.007'' thick. The piston is finally honed down to where it has a tolerance of .00025''-.0005'' with its respective cylinder.

The piston is finally hand lapped lightly using a 1000 grit grease based lapping compound. The piston is worked into the cylinder with the compound grinding away tiny striation in the cylinder wall and eliminates any fine spots in the vale that will interfere with the action of the completed rebuilt valve. I hope this has shed a bit more light on the process.

Feel free to share your thoughts and or additional questions.

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

tofu · Post by **tofu** » Thu Jun 22, 2006 4:27 pm

Excellent - these posts are my favorites on tubenet - highly informative - thanks for sharing Dan!

Daniel C. Oberloh · Post by **Daniel C. Oberloh** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 12:00 am

Had a little time this evening to do some shop cleaning and thought I would take a break and give a little update on the Holton. I was in the shop late last night/ early morning trying to catch up on the valve work. Mike who does my local plating, completed the final copper plating Friday of a batch of pistons that included Dave's four Holton valves. I want to get the load ready ASAP so I can get them back to Mike for final nickel plate next week, so I had to get busy.

The top branch got a bit of a working over in the past couple of weeks as did the rest of the big branches. This is a shot of the top bow prior to repair. Big hole, lots of cracks, Heavy sigh!

The same damage after a long stretch on the bench. The hole was cut out ,just like what was done on the bottom bow and an inlay patch fashioned and brazed in place . As I am sure you can see, there were a lot of cracks in the brass that took a while to track down in order to be ground out, silver brazed, hammered and filed smooth.

A good deal of effort was put into raising the dents and repairing the cracks and holes but these large branches have been seriously damaged in the past by the use of improper repair methods leaving the sheet brass badly stretched and distorted. By employing rounding rings, the bulges in the branches can be externally persuaded in such a way that I am able coax much of the branch back to its proper shape. This takes quite a bit of elbow grease.

The same is done to the bottom bow, Good thing I ordered the "super size" set of rings. Another good reason for using the rings, is that it allows the minor surface distortion in the brass to be pushed back into the shape of the branch as oppose to simply filling or sanding it off. I like to keep as much metal on the horn as possible and these tools allow me to do just that.

The bows are finally starting to shape up and I hope to have them completed before to long .

Here are the piston after that late night in the shop. They have had two rounds in the copper plating process to bring them up to and over the desired size. They were then externally honed down until they were .004'' smaller then there respective valve cylinders. The pistons are now ready to be nickel plated where again they will be plated oversize and then finally honed down to a dimension that is .0005'' smaller then the respective cylinder. Followed with a little hand lapping and some new guides, the valve work in the project will be complete.

Daniel C. Oberloh
Oberloh Woodwind and Brass Works
Seattle, WA
206.241.5767
www.oberloh.com

Bandmaster · Post by **Bandmaster** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 7:20 am

Thanks for the update Dan! I am starting to get excited because I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel. I am planning to make the trip up to Seattle this fall to pick up my Holton.

The only sad part is that gas will probably be $3.50 a gallon by then...

TubaSteve · Post by **TubaSteve** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 10:18 am

Wow! What a great story to follow. Thanks Dan for all the work on posting the progress of this horn. I can't wait to see it through. Very impressed with your care and detail. I have done some body work in the past and am familiar with hammer/dolly work and have done several metal finish hammer/weld patch and repairs in automotive sheet metal. I know how hard it is to get it right. My hat's off to a you! A real artist

Steve

Bandmaster · Post by **Bandmaster** » Sat Oct 21, 2006 2:29 am

That's OK.... it just means Dan got a little more practice making leadpipes before he makes one for mine!

Mine wil be better....

Bandmaster · Post by **Bandmaster** » Thu Nov 09, 2006 11:10 pm

OK, now to get this thread back on the topic of how my Holton 345 is coming along...

I just got off the phone with Dan where I teased him about not sending me photos lately. He finished my valve block a while back but he just sent me the photos tonight.

As a reminder, here is the last photo Dan posted a while back:

The valves are now nickle plated, lapped to the casings, new nylon valve guides installed, with the new heavier valve stems and the MW large finger buttons:

Here are the valves installed in the casing ready to start further assembly:

So it is getting closer to being done. He was working on the third bow of my Holton tonight, trying to iron out a few more imperfections. All the bows will be going out soon to be copper plated to build up the surface and fill in minor imperfections in the surface. According to Dan they had been abused by previous repairmen that tried to take shortcuts in its repair. To remind folks, this had been a high school tuba, so who knows what horrors it has survived?

Daniel C. Oberloh · Post by **Daniel C. Oberloh** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 8:49 pm

Happy New Year all!

Dave's Holton has not been forgotten. I have been tied up with a good deal of holiday work and that tends to force such projects to the back of the bench. That was not quite the case with the 345 though. It has been at the platers a bit longer then planned but that was not a big surprise, they were busy too. The bows had a lot of cracks and holes that needed to be corrected with inlays and a good deal of grinding and brazing. This presented a problem with the polishing and plate work not yet started. The metals being used would (during the buffing process) erode away at different rates leaving distortions and blemishes in the silver finish. Also, the large branches have a lot of waviness from the way they were made.

I wanted to avoid the issues with the silver solder and minimize, if not completely eliminate the distortions with a heavy layer of copper that could be sanded smooth, leveling the surface and allowing for uniform polishing prior to assembly and silver plating. In the above image are the newly copper plated bows; I have sanded the copper and eliminated the majority of blemishes. I am not completely satisfied so they will be going back to the plater for another round of copper that will address the remaining surface defects. Once they are finished, I will start to work assembling the body of the tuba.

This should get Dave smiling.

Best regards,

Daniel C. Oberloh

Oberloh Woodwind and Brass Works
Saving the world, one horn at a time...
www.oberloh.com [/list]

MikeMason · Post by **MikeMason** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 9:52 pm

I don't fully expect the answer to this but, has anyone sold any of your completed masterpieces such as that Martin or one of the holtons and if so, what do they go for?As the owner of a vintage holton that is my daily player(though a frankenhorn), just curious.......

Daniel C. Oberloh · Post by **Daniel C. Oberloh** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 2:14 am

MikeMason wrote:I don't fully expect the answer to this but, has anyone sold any of your completed masterpieces such as that Martin or one of the holtons and if so, what do they go for?As the owner of a vintage holton that is my daily player(though a frankenhorn), just curious.......

Not sure if any of the owners have ever parted with there prizes, I don't know of any. Cost? What woould a new HB or Thine (SP) go for? All I know is what the owners have invested in them, what they would sell for is hard for me to say. How much you got?

Daniel C. Oberloh

iiipopes · Post by **iiipopes** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 9:09 am

If you want bottom line cost v performance v durability, just get a Miraphone 186 and be done with it. These instruments are not about cost. They are about conserving and preserving beautiful instruments that are as much works of art as they are wonderful players, and part of the great heritage of American band and orchestra music.

ASTuba · Post by **ASTuba** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 9:14 am

iiipopes wrote:If you want bottom line cost v performance v durability, just get a Miraphone 186 and be done with it. These instruments are not about cost. They are about conserving and preserving beautiful instruments that are as much works of art as they are wonderful players, and part of the great heritage of American band and orchestra music.

I think Mike, being an owner of a Holton 345 BBb, is just trying to get an idea of what one of these restored instruments would fetch on the open market. His is a real player.

MikeMason · Post by **MikeMason** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 9:50 am

I'm certainly not against cost-ineffective restorations of tubas and think its a great way for philanthropists to spend their money

(I think I remember a story of how James Jenkins' York got tricked out and it was basically this story.A wealthy hobbiest gave a blank check to a restorer and years later James ended up with the horn for much less than the cost of the restoration).I like to think of my tuba playing as a small business,where profit matters.The horns I actually play for money cost me a total of 4200.00.I've owned many tubas,nearly all of which cost more each than these 2 combined,but they are all gone and these 2 remain.I do daydream of having my holton oberloh'd,but this would ruin my profit margin for several years

.How many of the completed masterpieces are out there and how bout a photo gallery of restored BAT's ?

The Big Ben · Post by **The Big Ben** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 10:27 am

There are things you want and things you need.

My trumpet is a Selmer K-Modified Lightweight I got when I was 13 years old. (I'm 50) My father worked extra shifts until he could get it for me as a Christmas surprise. So many truly wonderful activities of my life have happened with that trumpet. Both of my parents are gone but I still have that trumpet they saved to get me. I had it relacquered a few years ago and a hack job was done and it just doesn't look right- at least to me. It has that golden Selmer look but there are a few small details which truly urk me. Because of the hack relacquer and de-denting, to get the little details ironed out and have it looking like I want it to look, it would involve some metal work like seen on this Holton but on a much smaller scale and gold plating. This work is in the category of "want". I'm not sure if I will ever "need" to have it done but, when and if it does, I'll spend the money.

If you "need" to have a beautiful, restored classic tuba, you'll find a way. If you only "want" one, the dreaming, old catalogs and looking at Dan O's site probably will do.

----

I'd love to see a gallery of restored tubas at something like a national tuba convention. And hear them played, too!

Bandmaster · Post by **Bandmaster** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 12:38 pm

Boy Dan, you just made my day!!!!! The bows look so much better now. Thank you! This means assembly is just around the corner and I will have my Holton back soon.

A reminder of what Dan started with:

(note all the patches Dan is trying to hide for me)

As far as the money I am putting into this project... I could never afford a horn when I was in college so I guess maybe I am making up for it now. But I still look at the cost of a brand new top line BBb horn and I will still be in the ballpark with the overall cost. I got the tuba cheap enough off of eBay, and I really liked how it played (even in the rough condition), so I don't mind restoring a rare old quality instrument. Plus nobody makes a tuba like this in BBb anymore, so I couldn't buy one new even if I wanted. I used to direct a youth band that I had founded here in SoCal, hence the nickname "Bandmaster" I took many years ago. So I have sold off many of the instruments I bought for my band and am using some of that money to pay for the restoration.

pedaljay · Post by **pedaljay** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 3:44 pm

Hi,

I think I would chime in a bit on this topic as my 1920's 4/4 York is now being restored by Mr. Lee Stofer. I am not spending as nearly as some of these other folks. I may have just been lucky, but my York was already in great condition. The only thing that "needed" to be done were the valves. The body is in excellent condition for its age. I am not having my York silver plated right now and may look at the possibility later in life (I'm only 27). The rest of the horn will look great after some minor dent work and a new laquer job, because quite frankly that's all the horn needs. Now to the $$$$ thing. I feel I am not paying a lot for the restoration, others think I am paying a small fortune for it. I feel it is worth every penny to restore a uncut 1920's York, because I am doing my part to continue the legacy that I have come to value. You can't but these horns in this condition just everyday. Will I sell my horn??? The answer is no, I will not sell the York, because I can't find a better horn for me. I have owned a wonderful example of the Willson BBb and a truly magnificent Marzan. None of these come close to the York, and I am sure I will fall in love with the York even more after Mr. Stofer is done with it. I will post pics when the horn is done, hopefully by February.

Jason Martin

Bandmaster · Post by **Bandmaster** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 5:32 pm

harold wrote:My horn is not being repaired - neither is Dave's. They are being restored - which is a far more complex and expensive process. I can't speak for Dan's pricing, but if I had a horn that had been beat up pretty well and required several trips through the copper bath, I would anticipate a restoration bill in the $7,000 range as the low end.

So let's do the math:

Horn: $4,500
Restoration: $7,500
Case: $750

Total: $12,750

Now my COST is almost $13,000. What would someone pay for a completely restored Holton 345?

Don't know the answer to that. I do know that they don't make them anymore.

Let's see.... in my situation:

Horn off eBay with original case: $2,900
Restoration of tuba (Dan's first estimate): $5,000 (will change some I'm sure)
New bell from DP: $750
Restoration of case (work done by me): $200
Gas to drive horn to and from Seattle: $350

Total Cost: $9,200

Now I am sure Dan's original estimate will be a little low, but that estimate included repairing the original bell which he no longer has to do since I found a new bell. He has done more work on other parts of the horn than originally stated, so I have to see how it works out in the end. If it is more it won't break my heart or my pocketbook. Plus I have traded to him to be applied to the bill an Olds bass trombone, an old beat up Miraphone 186 BBb as a core to rebuild for re-sale, a Conn tenor sax, and two Bundy clarinets. So I will make out OK. I will be right about the price of a brand new silver MW 2165, only they don't come in the key of BBb!

tofu · Post by **tofu** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 7:07 pm

I am curious as to the new bells that are being used on some of these restored 345's. Are they NOS or are they being made for a current production tuba or is someone hand fabricating them?

BTW, I really enjoy the restoration pictures and the stories about bringing these old horns back to life.

Why were so many 345's sold to schools? I would have thought they would have been pretty expensive for most school districts.

cjk · Post by **cjk** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 7:12 pm

tofu wrote:I am curious as to the new bells that are being used on some of these restored 345's. Are they NOS or are they being made for a current production tuba or is someone hand fabricating them?

BTW, I really enjoy the restoration pictures and the stories about bringing these old horns back to life.

Why were so many 345's sold to schools? I would have thought they would have been pretty expensive for most school districts.

My bet: Meinl-Weston 2165 bells. The original 2165 was a copy of a Holton. I'd be willing to bet the bell is near identical.

cjk · Post by **cjk** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 7:24 pm

harold wrote:
I can tell you however that I don't have any horns that I won't sell - provided the dollars are right.

Here's a ballpark for one of my next restorations:

I purchased a complete and in good condition 4/4 BBb York on E-Bay about 6 months ago for $5,400. It is in line at Dan's shop for restoration and although the work is far less extensive than what is being done to Dave's Holton, I anticipate spending about $4,000 to have the body completely worked over, valves redone including replating and truing the cylinders as well as all new silver plate.

I will then spend about $750 for a case to protect it.

I will have spent $10,150 and will have a 1920's vintage York that is in exquisite condition and will play as good as it looks.

I could buy a Miraphone 186 new for $4,500 or a 1291 for $7,000 - however these really are not comparable horns. The closest thing that I can find is an HB-4P which according to CMC lists at $16,500.

The HB is a good horn, but they can always make more of them. I will have a classic American made 80 year old horn that should withstand another 100 years.

What would it potentially sell for? I'm not certain - there are not enough of them around that good data can be collected on that.

I would think that a Holton 345 with the original valve block after being restored would sell in the $9,000-$11,000 range. One with a MW valve block would sell for slightly less depending on the work that was done on it.

A Holton 345 without any previous work AND in good playing shape should sell for somewhere in the $5,000 - $5,500 range with $5,500 being pretty much top end.

The problem with these Holtons is that many of them were school horns and were beat to snot. I have only seen two that didn't have any patches. Most of them need to have the bells replaced. I don't remember the exact count, but Dave's had nearly 18 just on the bell.

Mine had a patch on the bell that was 25 square inches in size.

Fortunately Dan has a source for bells this size since in many cases, the expense to try and save them is usually not economically viable.

The problem is that people overspend on aquiring these horns, underestimate the restoration costs and have vastly overinflated ideas as to potential worth.

My horn is not being repaired - neither is Dave's. They are being restored - which is a far more complex and expensive process. I can't speak for Dan's pricing, but if I had a horn that had been beat up pretty well and required several trips through the copper bath, I would anticipate a restoration bill in the $7,000 range as the low end.

So let's do the math:

Horn: $4,500
Restoration: $7,500
Case: $750

Total: $12,750

Now my COST is almost $13,000. What would someone pay for a completely restored Holton 345?

Don't know the answer to that. I do know that they don't make them anymore.

What does someone pay for a 6/4 BBb horn? I can get a used Culbertson at Baltimore Brass for $8,300. I can also get a Conn 25J off of E-bay for $750.

So basically, the cost of these Holton restorations exceeds the cost of a NEW Grontiz PBK. There has to be some other attraction to doing this other than money since I doubt the horns would ever sell for the money the owners put in.

TubeNet

The rebirth of a Holton 345 has started...

Valve block is done