Band practice was cancelled last week due to bad weather, and it might be cancelled again tonight.  I hope not, since I have a different trumpet to try out now.

Finally, after a couple of months of trying various remedies and techniques, I was able to remove the tuning slide from the laquered ’73 Olds Ambassador trumpet this past weekend.

What finally worked?  First, I soaked the entire horn in warm water with vinegar in it for 4-5 hours.  Then, with light tapping on the slide with a screwdriver and a mallet, I was able to loosen the slide enough so that I could pull it out.  The funny thing was that it didn’t look all corroded like you might expect.

I will reassemble the horn with valve oil and slide grease this afternoon.  If we DO have band practice this evening, I’ll take the ’73 with me to try out tonight.  From previous tests, it seemed to blow much more freely than my silver Ambassador.  We’ll see this evening, hopefully.

In other trumpet-related notes, I won a cheap auction for a couple of wallhanger horns… the first is a semi-mangled H.N. White silver-plated cornet from the early 20th century (missing all 3 valves) , and the 2nd is a Sky trumpet (who makes these?? this one is missing one valve and one of the bottom valve caps).  The Sky looked like it was originally black, but someone had sanded off most of the finish, except for the valve casings.

Why would I buy those, you ask?  Well, since they’re not worth repairing, I am going  to build a desk-top fountain out of the Sky trumpet, and I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the cornet yet.  In coming months, I’ll show you photos of the progress of the trumpet fountain.