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Generally, plating doesn't go on smoothly enough to provide the kind of seal you would need. That's especially true of hard chrome. I've done quite a bit of valve work on trumpets, valve 'bones, and tubas. I generally work with nickel plating, but I just ordered the Caswell hard chrome plating kit. That's because I have a horn with nickel valves that the plating company I usually use (Anderson in Elkhart IN) won't plate over nickel.To do it right, you need to plate, then machine down. This can be done with a hinged wooden valve block--available through Ferree's Tools--that lets you use valve grinding paste to achieve a uniform diameter. Usually, rebuilding a valve block on a tuba requires not only building up the valves, but plating them to an oversize, and then honing the cylinder bore to make them fit. Not an easy process, but it works.
Generally, plating doesn't go on smoothly enough to provide the kind of seal you would need. That's especially true of hard chrome. I've done quite a bit of valve work on trumpets, valve 'bones, and tubas. I generally work with nickel plating, but I just ordered the Caswell hard chrome plating kit. That's because I have a horn with nickel valves that the plating company I usually use (Anderson in Elkhart IN) won't plate over nickel.
To do it right, you need to plate, then machine down. This can be done with a hinged wooden valve block--available through Ferree's Tools--that lets you use valve grinding paste to achieve a uniform diameter. Usually, rebuilding a valve block on a tuba requires not only building up the valves, but plating them to an oversize, and then honing the cylinder bore to make them fit. Not an easy process, but it works.
