Limey..........? We're Brassed Off....
 

Thor's baritone he has at home (on loan from the school) is a piece of shit. he's also not very good at taking care of it and we're not very good at reminding him to...... so we decided he should finally clean the damn thing (he's had it at home about two months....:o) ...and the valves and slides are all stuck. the brass coloring is flaking off all over revealing a reddish color and beest suspects this has happened inside the valves and they have corroded. We must assume that they were able to take them apart and clean them sometime during the summer when the instrument was handed in by the last student.

We'd rather not draw the teacher's attention to the fact that it hasn't been cleaned in two months ....do you have any suggestions?

(please and thank you)

.....WD40 is usually our answer to all such problems, beest has found a few discussions suggesting that and no-one saying "oh no no no nonoooooo! but we're still wary in case there are any rubber seals or anything we might not know about.....


/amateurville

You could try a graphite spray.

Beest is skeptical -he thinks that wouldn't help loosen it. Is this from experience?

There are a lot of YouTube videos like this that
Might help:

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pQJR2CxeOAc

I'm afraid to click..... (no offence but really ....Sheldon posting a video about lubricating sticky valves and sliders.... :headshake :eek:)

But in reality, we've (read beest, professional engineer) tried a few things (hairdryer etc) and have a few more drastic ones on the list, but we thought seeing as there was an expert on board.....


(isn't youtube a marvelous resource, though? beest and hector used it last month to change the clutch on the washing machine and it's like new now!)

I assume you've tried to take them out and clean them in warm water etc?

You might try immersing the whole thing in warm slightly soapy water. I just re-read your op so assume you just can't get them out at all.

eta: I am no expert, but did play brass and woodwind instruments throughout school so am just trying to remember the things we used to try when we fucked up our instruments. (not that we ever did that of course. haha)

yup, tried heat and wet........ just very afraid of effing up the whole thing b/c replacement cost is way greater than value.....

also tried innertube/swim cap for friction, light tapping with wooden spoon or similar......

No hurry, It plays fine as well as we can tell, but we'll need to fix it at some point....

thanks all, sorry to sound like an ingrate. it's late here and I'm pissed off that I didn't really register that he still hadn't ever cleaned it. I read him and his duet partner the riot act about cleaning their instruments just 10 days ago and the little shit had the nerve to chime in about how important it was when his partner fessed up to rarely cleaning his trumpet. then they went through the motions of doing that. grr...

I assume you've tried to pry the valves out using a kitchen knife or something similar? Chances are they're just gummed up with left over saliva etc. If the actual instrument is corroding, there's not a lot you can do about it from home though. Maybe it's just dying?

Hopefully Limey will have some more helpful advice. To me it seems you've tried most of the likely home cures.

oh it's way past dead. it's the original Zombie baritone. he has a better one that he keeps at school to play in band class, this is a spare they let him have for practice. but his teacher is all about fleecing parents for 'repairs'. last year, she tried to charge us for a dodgy trumpet valve that we'd been complaining about all year til we offered video proof it had always been like that