If the sax is made well and all the parts that hold the bell on do their job well, there's no need for a permanent join between the body and bow, and a soft soldered joint will be a pain to undo if you need to get the bell off. The good thing with removeable bells is just that - they can be removed to do dent work and make repadding much easier. Having to unsolder and resolder a joint only increases the risk of burning the lacquer or unsoldering nearby pillars.jbtsax said:I think that for a better mechanical bond, either epoxy or soldering would work better than beeswax which seals but does not bond the material. Also beeswax would become runny if the instrument were left in a hot car for example. Also there are so many different epoxies on the market now, I think it would be hard to generalize and say that they all become brittle over time.
John
I agree, but not all saxes have the mechanical ring that holds the bow connection in place.Chris Peryagh said:If the sax is made well and all the parts that hold the bell on do their job well, there's no need for a permanent join between the body and bow, and a soft soldered joint will be a pain to undo if you need to get the bell off.
Agree as well, however a bell bow that has been epoxied in place can be easily detached using much less heat than it would take to unsolder a soldered joint.Chris Peryagh said:The good thing with removeable bells is just that - they can be removed to do dent work and make repadding much easier. Having to unsolder and resolder a joint only increases the risk of burning the lacquer or unsoldering nearby pillars.
Never, if I can help it, but I have had several customers who do it on a regular basis.Chris Peryagh said:And how often do you leave your saxes in a hot car?
I wish Yamaha used a slow-set instead of the 5-minute type. Also on Yamaha's, have you noticed that there is limited epoxy between the tenons of the joints and there is a huge circular bead of it running circular around the bore at the seam? Most of teh time I find the epoxy has not adhered to the outer lacquered bow male tenon more often than the inner unlaquered body tube female tenon. I always rough-up those areas with some steelwool when I'm prepping for reassembly.Gordon (NZ) said:The layer of epoxy is pretty thin. So, thinking of glass fibre, and how brittleness is hardly an issue when a brittle material is thin, I think that the problem is not so much brittleness, but rather it may be inadequate adhesion to the surfaces. That is because of poor preparation.
Also, slow-setting epoxy adheres better than fast-setting.
There is no body-bow band on the YAS23. (Never heard of a 275 here in the US) I believe the 475 series and all models there and up do have a band.Chris Peryagh said:Do the current Yamaha 23 and 275 saxes have the ring clamp at the join, or are they still a plain joint without one (but glued up with epoxy)?
If a keyguard flange needs to be soldered back on in this area, chances are you'd take the bell off to do this work anyway (as it's likely some damage has been done to the body), as well as cleaning off all the wax used to seal the joint before doing any soldering work.Saxdaddy said:I don't really find any kind of wax to be a good idea, just because of its susceptibility to heat. What if a key guard flange needs to be repaired close to the joint, paraffin wax is the most susceptible, melting at a very low temperature.