Re: Re: Re: Weight difference/plating


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Posted by Joe Baker on June 27, 2003 at 12:29:02:

In Reply to: Re: Re: Weight difference/plating posted by Rick Denney on June 27, 2003 at 08:52:14:

You da man, Rick. I couldn't believe it could be anywhere near that much, so I put pen to paper. I considered a 4/4 BBb tuba with a bell size of 18", length of 16 feet. To make my math simple, I treated the conical section of the horn as a cone 13 feet long, 9" radius at the large end, .75" radius at the small end. I figured the cylindrical portion to be a total of 17 feet length (including the valve tubing) and .75 diameter. I came up with a total surface area of app. 5150 square inches. Because my estimates err toward overestimation, I ignored the surface area of valve casings, thumb rings, inner slides (do they plate them too?) Plated at .0004 thickness, that came to 2.06 sq. inches of silver. At .379 lb/sq.in., 2.06 square inches weighs .78 lb., or...

... 12.48 oz.

Damn.

At current prices, that's about $60 for the silver. So it becomes significant if they were to plate the inside of the instrument. Assuming that they do not, how do they keep the plating solution out? I've assumed they immersed the horn, but maybe not.

Joe Baker, who suspects Rick did at least a LITTLE computation on this before posting.


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