An ordinary office paper shredder can save you the time of tearing up lots of little pieces of paper.
So if I have a cardboard cone, how do I then bend it? Or do I somehow remove the papier-mache from the cone before bending that? It seems to me that if the papier-mache is still soft enough to bend, then it’ll collapse into a mushy mess as soon as it’s removed from the cardboard.
Do you have plans to play at Akron Tuba Christmas in December? Tucker Jolly and all the other tubaists would flip their lid to see this thing in action!
You’re making a mold from a cardboard shape covered with paper mache. You’re not removing paper mache from the cardboard. You’ll shape paper mache over that mold when it’s dry for the final piece. You get it off the mold because the mold is covered with a release agent like wax. So what you’re making with the mold is the final shape made of paper mache and reinforcement.
The cardboard cone can be made with gores that are cut and bent to form a bell shape close to what you want for the mold. Just like a parachute is made with gores to form a convex hemispherical shape your gores are cut and bent to form a concave bell shape. The cross sections are actually polygonal so you need to shape paper mache over it to get it rounded. I suppose it’s possible to just make the bell out of cardboard like that and shape paper mache over the inside and outside to make the bell. But I think if you form the bell over a mold and let it dry you’ll end up with a better shape.
If the the a circular cross section of the bell could be polygonal then just make the bell out of cardboard gores. I don’t know if that would make a difference for the sound. Shouldn’t be hard to cut paper gores and tape them together to see what you get.
An even easier mold would be to find a tuba with a removable bell and use that.
Oh, the bell! Yeah, that’s easy. The wooden framework I have right now should be enough to serve as a substrate for the papier-mache for that. The part I’m having difficulty with is the curved sections of tubing.
I get that will difficult. PVC pipe can be bent with heat, but it’s not easy to get the exact shape you want.
Here’s a picture that shows a good view of the bell (it’s that part on the left that looks like a bloomin’ onion):
How do you form the final bell from that?
Also, does it matter if any of the parts have a circular cross section? Pipe organs can be made from square pipes. However the pipes are straight, not curved.
Papier-mache on the inside of those pieces, bridging the gap between them. Which won’t give a perfect circular cross-section, but a dodecagon should be close enough. Or if that’s not enough, I can put some more loops of wire in there, too.
Oh, and
There’s usually a Cleveland TubaChristmas, too. But keep in mind that I literally haven’t played for half my life, and even when I did, I wasn’t exactly stellar at it. I’m pretty confident that I can still play a scale, which will be enough to test this and tune it. Beyond that, though, I’d definitely want more than a couple of months to get back in practice.
So you could just use cardboard or thin bendable plastic between those pieces. Plaskolite would work well for that but costs a bit more than cardboard.
A bit off topic, but I was very surprised to see a tuba player using a mute at a recent concert by the St. Paul Orchestra. The bloody thing was the size of a table lamp.
Hard to find a toilet plunger that size (a traditional mute for a trombone).
Are these wide tubes? For smaller ones you could print a mold with water soluble filament then wrap it with epoxy and fabric. If your maker shop has the equipment you can form molds from foam board, cover them and dissolve the foam with acetone.
Can use flexible plastic hose? Is it just the length that matters? Using heat and a filler material to keep the shape it can be stretched around a bend to a consistent shape. But I think that it’s still difficult to maintain a constant diameter around the bend.
This is a cool idea. It’s the valves that sound difficult to do right. Plus it’s big, that’s a lot of making in volume and parts count. Woodwinds and trombones are way simpler to make but hardly as much of an accomplishment.
The largest of the curved tubes has a diameter of about 12 cm at the small end, and 13.9 cm at the large end. The smallest of the curved tubes goes from 2.2 cm to 3.2 cm.
Oh, they were. That was what most of the time thus far on the project has been spent on. But they’re small enough that they can be 100% 3D printed, which means that now that I have the design finished, they’ve moved from the “hard” column to the “done” column.
And something like a recorder would be easy, but a clarinet or the like has all sorts of linkages between the bits. I’m not sure where I would even start on making those.
Tuba Christmas isn’t the Philharmonic. You’d be ok fudging it. I’m a trombone player who hasn’t been in a band in a decade who plays treble euphonium once a year for TC and I’m just fine. So, don’t sweat being good enough to play in Tuba Christmas, you totally could. Might even want to try to buy the books early and practice!
Akron is one of the biggest ones in the country and one of the oldest. The guy who conducts, Tucker Jolly, is kind of a big deal. Maybe you could join the Cleveland one this year for practice and show up at the Akron one next year!
Or not. I haven’t been back since 2019 because everyone still has covid and that much spit and breath in one place makes me nervous.
But I would be remiss to not urge one of the most unique tubas in NEO to not do a Tuba Christmas or two!
Are you making a Tuba, or a Sousaphone?
Not a nit-picky question. In my high school band we had both (one kind for marching, one kind for symphonic band), so I’m sensitive to the difference. Nobody wants to march carrying a symphonic tuba.
I do know the difference (though a sousaphone is a kind of tuba). I was tempted to go for a sousaphone design, but then all of the large tubing would have to be curved, and I’m having enough headaches as it is with the curved tubing.
There are places where one could attach a strap to my design for easier carrying, but it’s mostly intended for sit-down use. Especially since, even as heavy as an ordinary brass tuba is, this one is going to be heavier (my materials are less dense than brass, but I need more of them).
Use clay, it’s what the modelers do. You can scrape it to be perfect. Heck, these kids built a freaking Bugatti!
https://www.yahoo.com/news/young-vietnamese-car-enthusiasts-build-014708584.html?guccounter=1
I put in a day at the makerspace today, and learned a few things. First, I learned that my spit-valve design has a few issues that I need to fix. OK, add that to the list.
Second, I learned that if you have the wrong settings for the laser cutter, and try to cut posterboard with cut lines that are too close together, you end up burning away your entire piece.
Third, I learned that if you have the right settings for the laser cutter, engraving on posterboard is almost invisible (though oddly, the wrong settings work half-decently for that).
I think I now have the curved tubing sections under control, and I have the pieces for all of my straight tubing sections, so expect more pictures on that soon.
So, those who know papier-mache: I’m approaching completion on that part (and man, that’s taking a lot longer than I thought), but I’m worried that there might be loose bits flapping around, or dents, or other flaws in the interior surface (which is, of course, the surface that matters). I’m thinking of taking a wad of damp rags, or something similar, sized to just fit inside of the tube, and pulling that through on a string, to smooth out the interior surface. Is this likely to work?
Also by the end of today, I should have at least one copy of all of my 3D printed pieces.