MTFCA Forum

My brass horn mount decided to break on me and I'm looking for options. I've never soldered brass but I'm willing to give it a try. What you see here is what I'm left with. The stem snapped and the brass cap is missing. Do I need to de-solder the remainder of the stem? Lang's horn mount doesn't seem like it would fit this horn.

How would you go about repairing this?



I'll have to MacGyver something for now for a fair I'll be at tomorrow.

More photos:

Dan, check this post: What have you done to your Model T in September? - MTFCA Forum

https://www.mtfca.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=38488

Post by RGould1910 » Mon Sep 11, 2023 3:57 pm

Repaired a broken horn bulb bracket. Langs says the soldered joint often breaks. Mine did. I saw no sense In resoldering so I did a mechanical repair with a 10 32 machine screw and a small copper washer using blue Loctote to hold things tight.
20230911_123907.jpg
20230911_123416.jpg

Pictures may not show but are visible in original posting.

I had the same thing happen to my horn. My take is that the original mount is not up to the job so I dropped it off at Britten's Brass works in Michigan to have them design and install a better mount. Unfortunately, Mr. Britten suffered an accident shortly after I delivered the horn to him so I have not received it back yet.

If you go to Hershey you'll find some people who work in brass there. You could also probably find a replacement horn for a reasonable price. I've seen horns like yours sell for $20 around here.

Silver solder

For my son's baseball game tonight and the fair tomorrow I have a temporary fix... I'll need to figure out a more permanent solution soon though.

Any place that repairs brass band instruments should be fine with repairing that horn. They will do a much neater job than the people that built it originally, and they will probably silver-solder it. (Much stronger than soft solder.)

Just my two pfennigs.

Do they make brass colored duck tape? A torch, flux and silver solder.

Dan, as stated earlier silver solder should work. A few issues you’re having are based on the cast & the length of the post. The mount post looks like a sand cast and just my experience with sand casting is how brittle it is. The other problem is the length of the post. This issue is also seen with the mounts the vendors sell. The originals are fairly short compared to the repops. The longer post creates more vibration than the shorter style thus not sturdier than original. Good luck.

OilyBill wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 15, 2023 7:19 pm

Any place that repairs brass band instruments should be fine with repairing that horn. They will do a much neater job than the people that built it originally, and they will probably silver-solder it. (Much stronger than soft solder.)

I never would have thought of going to an instrument repair shop but it makes perfect sense. I just checked and there are about 5 of them within a 40 minute drive. I'll have to reach out.

JTT3 wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 15, 2023 7:31 pm

The longer post creates more vibration than the shorter style thus not sturdier than original.

It does appear to be a very thin post considering the size of the horn. I can see why these break easily. With the missing cap and part of the post, I'm thinking this is a little more difficult of a repair.

Dan, without intending to cause offence, a model T deserves a better horn than that one. It looks like something out of an Indian market stall. I'd fix it temporarily and hunt out a genuine one on the classifieds.

Allan from down under.

Dan I think you could do it very easily, especially if you unscrew the other part of the mount so you could work with it a use Silver solder not just solder. Looks like you could sink the post deeper and fill the hole up with silver solder. Just remember you’ve got to screw that back on so have a way to do that. You might even be able to die the post and put a nut on it after a fill & drill on the piece off the horn.

One hint a VERY skilled jeweler demonstrated for me when he soldered a brass lamp I brought to him, that had age cracking:

The VERY FIRST thing he did was run a very fine saw blade down the crack, right to the bottom. He stated it would NEVER be successful to just silver solder the crack itself without first doing the saw blade maneuver. The reason he gave was that the edges all along the crack had corrosion and dirt in them, and there was NO WAY to join them successfully, and no way to clean the crack edges, no matter what you do. The blade was probably .020" thick, and slid down the crack like butter. He then applied a dot of flux to the crack, and using a very tiny flame with a jewelry torch, ran a line of silver solder right down the crack to the end. He then squared off the end, so it matched the rest of the stamping, (There was just a tiny nub sticking out at the end of the joint.) blended off the excess with a very fine sanding pad, and finally polished it. When he was done, I had to use a magnifying glass to see where the repair had been done, and even with the glass, I had a very hard time finding where the repair had been done. The gleam of the polished brass made the repair invisible. He also pointed out that now that area of brass had been annealed from the heat, it was unlikely to crack again (Probably for the next 100 years or so)

This guy DEFINITELY knew his stuff. (At one time he was the largest platinum casting jeweler in California, Arizona, and New Mexico. At that time, he was the ONLY platinum caster in Arizona, since you need special equipment, as platinum casts at 6000 degree F. and few jewelers in those 3 states, and NONE in Arizona, had the skills or the equipment to do the work.)