[Trombone-l] Home Valve Cleaning

[Gabriel Langfur]

Good answer Mike!

I would add that I personally have not had good experience with Binak Pro valve oil. It may be that you're using too much of it, which they tell you not to do. I much prefer oils that you can just use freely. 

And speaking of oil, the longer I work at Shires and see and hear about valve problems, the more heartily I recommend Hetman oils, which are a unique synthetic formula that has amazing properties to both clean and prevent corrosion. I would recommend buying a large-ish bottle of the Hetman Light Rotor oil and flooding the valve a few times over the course of a couple of weeks. If you stuff a paper towel in the slide receiver and leave the bell upright, you can pull out the paper a few hours later and see black residue being pulled off. This is good! It's corrosion actually coming off the surfaces of the metal. The Hetman Light Bearing & Linkage is also excellent, for use on the valve spindles, and even though it's a little thin, the #7 Slide Gel is great, and if it drips into the valve will dissolve easily in the Rotor Oil.

You may very well still need to visit a repair tech to clean out built up corrosion or resolve any mechanical issues, but this will certainly help.

Also, Steve Shires recommends oiling the valve AFTER heavy playing rather than when taking it out of the case at the start of the day, the reason being that corrosion forms when the metal is drying from the condensation of our breath. This has the added benefit that you can leave the bell section out overnight with the towel stuffed there, and any oil that's going to drip into the slide will have done so already.

I would strongly recommend that you oil your axial valves more often than 4x per year as well. Honestly, at Shires we recommend 2-4 times a week, because there is so much bearing surface on that style of valve. You don't really need to disassemble it for this kind of regular oiling, and you also don't need to go through the valve tuning slides - the main tuning slide receiver and handslide receiver are fine.   

Here's a pretty good link from my friends at Osmun Music about maintaining horn valves. The same principles apply, of course. http://www.osmun.com/reference/Rot_Maint.htm

As a group, we trombone players are pretty terrible about valve maintenance. Just trying to spread the word...:)

Gabe


----- Original Message ----
From: Michael D McLemore <mmclemore at charter.net>
To: Doug Rowe <darowe at gmail.com>; Trombone-L <TROMBONE-L at server5.samford.edu>
Sent: Saturday, October 6, 2007 2:19:55 PM
Subject: Re: [Trombone-l] Home Valve Cleaning


Hi Doug,

I think the best answer here is to take it to a pro.  I worked at
 Greenhoe
building valves and horns for 4 years.  In that time I saw most of what
there is to see when it comes to valves becoming "sticky."  There are
 so
many things that oiling is just a band-aid for.

Barring any mechanical problems, which can be many (most of which come
 from
the factory), it could just dirty with some corrosion build up.  With
 that,
a good sonic cleaning and/or chemical bath will fix it right up.  Then
 there
is the problem with disassembly and reassembly.   There are way too
 many
things to look out for while doing that than I have time to type.  BUT
someone trained to do this work will know what to look for.  It's a lot
 more
involved that most realize.

The time and money spent driving to and from will certainly be cheaper
 than
replacing damaged parts that take 6 months to arrive from a factory
 that may
or may not be on strike.

All the best,

Mike  

Michael D. McLemore
mmclemore at charter.net
 
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: trombone-l-bounces at maillists.samford.edu
[mailto:trombone-l-bounces at maillists.samford.edu] On Behalf Of Doug
 Rowe
Sent: Saturday, October 06, 2007 12:11 PM
To: Trombone-L
Subject: [Trombone-l] Home Valve Cleaning

Hello,

A quick question:

My Conn 88H valve gets a bit sticky on occasion.  Flooding the valve
 with
oil (I'm using Binak Pro) via the tuning slide and slide receiver helps
sometimes, but also has a tendency toward gumming up the slide if/when
 the
oil dribbles its way down and mixes with my slide cream.  I avoid
 similar
issues on my Edwards bass by disassembling, cleaning, and oiling the
 valves
(thus avoiding have to pour anything into the tuning slide) semi
 regularly
(four times a year or so).

Disassembling the Thayers is easy.  I'm not as sure about the
 traditional
rotor, though.  Does anyone else (non trained repair-person) do this at
home?  Is there any website detailing what to pull/pry/push in order to
disassemble a traditional valve?  Or am I taking a really big risk and
SHOULD just leave it to a repair person (I'm not opposed to repair
 people,
but there is an inconvenience factor since the nearest repair folk are
 about
40 miles away).

On or off list replies are fine.  If someone knows of a thread in which
 this
has been covered I'd be happy to have a pointer to that, as I was
 unable to
find anything in the available archives.

Thanks,
Doug
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