The Moron's Guide to the Dent Eraser


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Posted by Rick Denney on October 23, 2002 at 22:03:29:

A wonderfully generous compatriot who has a large collection of brass instruments allowed me to borrow his new Dent Eraser, and I jumped at the chance. I've used it to either remove or accentuate some of my various dents, and have come to a few conclusions:

1. Use a ball that is over half the diameter of the branch in question. Any less will create ridges if the brass is soft.

2. Be careful of instruments with dirt or unevenness on the inside of the tubing. The texture will become embossed in the brass.

3. Forget removing dents from the insides of bows. The brass is too thick and the geometry of the Dent Eraser makes it ineffective. Fortunately, that's not where most dents are.

4. Likewise, don't even think of trying to remove dents from bells, though you make do some good on the outside curves of forward bells.

5. As has been said here before, don't try to remove dents through bow guards. It won't work.

6. Dent made by sharp objects that make a crease in the bottom of the dent will not be fully removed.

7. Some dents go away instantly, and some require a hour's worth of rubbing. Usually, the quicker it disappears the better the results.

8. The bigger the branch, the bigger the dent ball. The bigger then dent ball, the more magnetic pull, and the better it works. The smallest dent ball requires lots of patience to make any headway at all.

I practiced on the 20J, and removed some pesky little impressions here and there. Then, I tried to remove the couple of small impressions on my Yamaha F tuba, with not much success. I was able to lessen them, but they were not any less apparent. Yamaha brass must be stiffer on this isntrument than their reputation would indicate. I also worked some dents on my project horn where I hadn't been able to reach with my minimal dent-ball set, with some success. Finally, when my confidence was at its peak, I started working on the York Master. It had perhaps five or six visible but small dents, and a few other nearly invisible impressions. I was able to remove all but one so that you could hardly tell they were there, and that remaining one was on an inner branch which was just too small and thick to submit.

So, on the basis of what I did for the 20J, I give it a C+. The Yamaha's results earn no better than a C-, but the York Master scored an A. With conventional tools, my range is C- to B-, so I rate the experiment a success, especially since it was free.

Rick "who thinks it's useful mostly when allows the avoidance or deferral of disassembly" Denney


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