Home › Forum › Ask A Member › TUBE BENDING › Re: TUBE BENDING
A friend of mine and I built a new lead pipe for a tuba that I have. The lead pipe is the pipe that the mouthpiece attaches to and goes to the valve set. (I guess you can tell I am a tuba player…) The lead pipe was ordered from a instrument supplier and it is a drawn tube with an increasing bore. He had some solder type material that was a low melting alloy that we filled the pipe up with prior to bending. This kept the bore perfectly round while forming the bends to match up to the horn. We annealed the pipe first, and then filled it with the alloy. It took some time to cool down, but then we did form it up and then heated it to melt out the solder type metal. The horn was one that was heading to the scrap yard, and is now a real nice playing horn. One of my favorite tuba’s! Classic Reynolds Contempora American built tuba from 1963.
Steve