instrument cases and parts...

[Silvan]

I'm not having much luck with google today. Lee Valley's hardware catalog seems a dead end.

I could rig something up, surely, but it would be easiest to replace the original latches with similar parts. I have two old trumpets here with bad cases. One of the cases (from '48) is fugly, and I'm not worried about fixing it because I plan to build a new one. The other one (from '69) is in good enough shape to send the boy off to school with it (as long as no one in his class notices the gorgeous orange shag carpet lining it... ugh!), but the latches that keep it closed are broken. Well, one of them was broken. Now they've both been removed.

I mention the fact that there are two cases because by the look of it, the parts are of an identical form factor (slightly different locking mechanisms), even though the two trumpets are from different decades, and different manufacturers. It looks like the rounded brass-plated steel edge guards are identical too. These look like off-the-shelf parts from the age before high-impact plastic (though curiously, the '69 case has a styrofoam insert... did they have styrofoam in '69? I guess so... I ain't that old. Sorry all you geezers.)

Anyway, anybody got a clue here? The more stout half of this is 1/2 plywood with about a 2" long oval hole routed in it (with a 7/8" bit it looks like) to accept the locking part. The other end just has a little spring loaded flippy thing that engages with the locking bit, and the part where it attaches is only about 3/8" thick. Hard to describe, innit?

If I can't come up with something for this, I'll have to come up with a whole different plan. It's covered with mottled faux leather brown vinyl stuff. The wood is too thin to do anything creative with, but I'm thinking walnut might look OK against the vinyl. Maybe attach some kind of extra mounting pad and use some other kind of hardware on it.

In the latter case, any good ideas (with URLs, preferably) for some kind of non-OEM rig-something-up replacement hardware that would make for a good, very secure, spill-free closure of an instrument case? Preferably with some kind of locking mechanism. (My flute case was always flying open in middle school. I don't know how many times I dropped that thing on the stairs. It's no wonder I was 13th chair. I don't want the boy doing the same to his trumpet.)

And finally on this subject...

That one case is seriously, seriously fugly. I have a dent bag... Um... A gig bag I can use for the time being, but I want to build a new case for that horn. I started off with some plywood I have on hand, and by the time I cut out the parts, I had a 40 pound monstrosity. 3/4" oak ply with birch faces. (Why birch on the outside, oak on the inside? I'll never know.)

It's too heavy, and it's too light too. Oak wouldn't be much better. What Daddy really wants for his precious baby trumpet is something done up in walnut and brass. Oooooh, ahhhhh.

I could use some joinery ideas. I'll never find boards wide enough, so I figure start by gluing up 3" wide strips or such. Then I have six pieces to make a box, more or less, but beyond that I'm not quite sure what to do.

I could actually use a plan, I think. I don't want to get too fancy (no dovetails or anything) but I want it strong and well-built.

I have a long time to think this one over, since I have a walnut budget of $0 at the moment. Any nifty ideas?

What about hardwaring it up? One thought I have is to do simple double rabbet or whatever joinery (two interlocked L shapes) and hide the end grain under brass angles running between brass corner plates. Dremel up the brass and make it spiff, then cover the whole thing in... well, probably poly I guess. (Yes Monsieur Jacques, I'm thinking about polying walnut, because poly is indestructible, and this thing might see some nasty substances spilled on it.)

That could look seriously cool if I pulled it off right. I want people to go "holy crap dude, that's an instrument case? why? why on earth do you have such a gorgeous, ridiculously ornate and spiffy looking thing as an instrument case?"

Blah blah blah. Thanks for listening.

[Lew Hodgett]

RE: Subject

"Silvan" writes:

Pick up ye old trumpet case with trumpet enclosed, secure with a couple of rubber bands, and head for a musical instrument dealer.

They should be able to point you in the right direction.

Here in SoCal, there are lot of these places, since there are a lot of professional musicians who live here.

HTH

Lew

[Mark Jerde]

Another possibility is the band teacher. When I broke the latch on my t-bone case, Mr. Getzgo put a new one on in about 5 minutes -- holes, rivets & everythng. ;-) I guess I wasn't the first or the last who needed that repair.

-- Mark

[Silvan]

He keeps weird hours. I can never catch him "at home" when I am. (Probably because he's 425 years old, and has been repairing band instruments for 375 of those years. I think he plays a lot of golf or something these days.)

(Yes, "he" as in "the one." I only know one place around here I would trust to sell me anything more complicated than a pack of guitar strings.)

Don't have a band teacher yet. That comes next year.

What he thinks he's going to be taking to band next fall is a 1948 Getzen Super Deluxe with piss poor valves, severe pitting and red rot problems that I fixed as well as I could, dings galore, with most of the intra-valve tubing caved in somewhat. It's been stripped, and all the pretty tri-tone metal stuff turns a pukey brown if you breathe on it twice. It sits in a hideous "tweed" green case that's covered with cigarette burns, gouges, scratches, and has been to hell and back at least six times. (He's playing it now. Or, well, he's making really horrible noises with it anyway. He's taking good care of it, and has no idea it isn't his new baby after all.)

What he's actually getting is a '69 Olds Ambassador with a 95% intact original epoxy lacquer finish, only one itty bitty ding that's not remotely worth having taken out, perfect valves and slides, in a comparatively much more tasteful brown faux leather and orange shag carpet case. Except for the orange (I hate orange) it looks pretty cherry. It has seen some use to be sure, but the thing is like a Rolls Royce compared to the battered, crappy looking thing he expects to be taking with him.

Don't tell him he's getting it. :)

I'm trying to fix the original case, but I could always just suck it up and buy him a new one I guess. It seems like this is a difficult thing to make well at home if you want to keep it light and strong. Maybe I'll keep the case for me and not send him off with orange shag carpet inside. That's bound to get him beaten up by someone, don't you think? It looks tres Austin Powers bayyyyyyybe. Still need to fix it either way though.

[Rick]

Hey Michael,

Try this:

keywords "luggage hardware".

HTH

Rick

intra-valve

[mp]

Check to see if your local mafia is having any garage sales. Sometimes you can get a slightly used instrument case real cheap.

[Andy Dingley]

They're not easy to find. A friend of mine, a shooter, has been looking to get a suitable instrument case for ages.

His latest production was "the Black Russian", an enormous leather-trimmed papier-mache codpiece / riflecase, to suit an equally enormous .577 Snider. Laid up with brown Kraft paper over a polystrene foam former it took a huge amount of effort to produce a device of surpassing ugliness. It didn't smell much better either, owing to the quantities of xylene used to dissolve out the foam.

Commercial instrument cases (violins and cellos anyway) these days are rotationally moulded polypropylene. It has _much_ better impact resistance than all the alternatives, including aluminium or GRP. Looks cheap, but it preserves your instrument.

[patriarch]

Silvan wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Is there a university nearby, with any kind of a music program? They always have somebody to whom they can turn, when, to pick an absolutely random example, the trombone player gets his slide slammed in a band room door. (That couldn't happen, right? :-0 )

That sweet little Olds you found is a lot like the one my folks bought for me, back in the early Sixties. It got used as a 'parts horn', when the budget couldn't hack the reapir cost on a silver Benge, almost 30 years later. And the Benge was traded against the cost of an Olds Double French horn, a few years later...

Nothing sounds quite like good, old brass, well played and well maintained.

Keep investing in the kid!

Patriarch

[Mark Jerde]

Circa 1974. I played a POS Conn trombone for many years before I'd "earned" a new instrument from the parents. Finally, in high school, I got a new, good one. A Yamaha Professional with F-Attachment, somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 (twice what I paid for a used motorcycle. ;-)

THE VERY FIRST DAY I HAD IT I dropped it on the field in marching band practice!!!! The slide was sprung, and is still sprung. Several people worked on it but there is still to this day a slight catch between first and second position.

I had never dropped or dinged the Conn...

-- Mark

[Tim Douglass]

Look for briefcase hardware. I've replaced several briefcase latches and I think they are identical to the ones on my son's trumpet case. (too far away right now to go look)

As for building the case, you might also look at briefcase plans (I think Rockler has them) the basic idea is similar and it should get you going in the right direction at least. Tim Douglass

[Silvan]

Briefcase. Darmnf. I haven't tried yet, but I wager in advance that's probably the magic word I didn't think to feed google.

[Silvan]

Urf. That's why you were supposed to use the old horn for marching band, doofus! :)

(Actually, I quit after middle school, so I never did marching band. I was the 13th chair flute, and the only heterosexual male flute player. I didn't like band much. Can anyone figure out why? :)

(That's why the boy's playing a trumpet by dingey. No fruit pipe for him unless he realllllllllllllllly wants to play one. He doesn't even remotely want to play one, which is a good thing. Nobody beats up a trumpet player for being gay. I still catch shit from people as an adult for playing the flute.)

(Well, except certain large segments of the population who beat up anyone who's creative or artistic in any way, but at least the people in his band won't beat him up. :)

(I hope.)

[Silvan]

Yeah, there's always the $50 ABS case from Giardinelli, but where's the challenge in that?

[Andy Dingley]

You're not from Northern Ireland, are you ?

[Mark Jerde]

I've forgotten almost everyone's name from my 7th grade band class, except Dan Lacy, the 1st chair flute and only male in the section. This was the time the hormones were starting to flow and the rest of us males went from feeing sorry for Dan to being downright jealous. Dan was making out ok. ;-)

Sounds like you need a more mature and refined group of peers... ;-)

-- Mark

[Silvan]

Not me. There were some gorrrrrrgeous chickies in that flute sextion, but... Well, I was poor, and they weren't. There was this whole "My Daddy bought me this new open hole solid silver fancy flute with a gizmo a B foot and a split E, and you're still playing on that plated brass piece of garbage, ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww" thing going on.

I almost got a thing going with a girl in the oboe section next door though. Until my parents found out she was black and put an end to that.

I definitely do, but I *am* a truck driver. It's not that surprising when you think about it a minute, is it?

[Silvan]

No. Southwestern Virginia.

[Charlie Self]

Silvan notes:

Ah, the joys of a southern childhood. While my mother's family is from VA, I was fortunate enough to be born and raised in NY---where pretty much the same shit went on (don't know about now, but 50+ years ago, PC wasn't in anywhere).

Charlie Self "Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure." Ambrose Bierce

[Mark Jerde]

I'm a white guy, 100% Norwegian, 3+ generations in the US. I've been married to a wonderful woman, white, for 22 years. I hope we're buried together after a car accident in our 55th year of marriage.

But if she goes before I do, or walks out, or something, in all probability my next "teddy bear" will be of a "race" other than mine. I've done a lot of business travel in 25 years -- Europe, Central Asia, Central America, etc., and the women who have tempted me the most to take off the wedding ring have not been Caucasian.

My daughter, now a senior in high school, has attempted to shock me by saying she may be interested in non-white men. I've told her that's fine with me. After all, the genetic research has revealed that the pigmentations in the skin are a trivial, ignorable factor. As far as I'm concerned, my children can marry anyone of the oppostie sex. The color of the skin does not matter whatever. Besides, if her dad (me) had not flunked out of a full-ride ROTC scholarship he probably would have been married to a woman of another race, and she would never have been born! ;-)

Your parents were shortsighted, but it probably wasn't so much their fault as the era in which they were raised. My personal library contains many books written prior to 1920. Everyone grew up in a culture, and the writers of the early 1900's tended to have a "fixation" on the importance of the "blood" of someone. We now know this isn't true, but they didn't know it was true then.

I personally have a hard time judging historical figures of another era by our current knowledge. In most cases, I beleve they would act as I would if they had access to the same information I have today. Thoughts?

Silvan, you are not just a truck driver. You are a writer, an observer, a thinker, a commentator. You may happen to currently derive the bulk of your income by wrestling trucks on the tarmack, but that's not what you ARE. The many messages you have posted in the newsgroup prove you are much more than just someone who isn't confused by 12+ gears. Your writings of your family are worthy of Frost or Wright or any # of other "serious" writers. Doggoneit, I'm a Mensan, I've done very well in national HS contests, and my writing still SUX compared to yours and others in the newgroups. You percieve, you understand, you communicate! I know I'm very good at some things, Thank You, but I also know you're better than me at communicating! When I read your discriptions of your small shop, I understand. When I read my discriptions of my small shop, a week after posting, I go, "Huh?"

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I did not watch too much TV growing up. (In western South Dakota we only got 2 channels, + 1 PBS) But I do recall the one, single episode of "Banachek" (?sp) I saw. Banachek (sp?) needed to talk to a truck driver, and Banachek's (sp?) chauffer said, "Let me talk to him instead of you. We're both 'Knights of the Road.' When Banachek and the chauffer approached the trucker's apartment, they heard violin music faintly through the door. They listened for a little, and Banachek knocked on the door. The truck driver / violin player opened the door, and Banacheck said, 'Your playing of ______ (Mozart/?) ______ reminded me of (Isaac Stern / Pearlman / ______)

196x recording. Can I come in an talk?'

Banacheck's chauffer was flabbergasted. The truck driver wasn't another "Knight of the Road" but someone who chose something that gave him enough free time to persue his passion -- Music!

I think of you often, Silvan, when I read the newgroups or watch TV. IMO you're not just a truck driver, but you're someone storing up expericence and knowlege in huge silos, and will soon present your understandings in ways that will enrich your readers and yourself.

Go for it!

-- Mark

[Swingman]

Damn, Bubba ... keep that up and you're gonna have to marry him, instead of that black chick.