About 6 weeks later, I received a call from Ron. The case was ready. When I got to the upholstery shop, I was amazed at how good a job Bill did. It was beautiful. Ron gave me a price break—to keep the cost “affordable”, as it had taken Bill about 20 hours to do the work.

When I got home, I tried to put the sax in the case. Unfortunately it no longer fit. The fit was too tight. There was too much pressure placed on the delicate keys. I called Ron's shop, and we made an appointment for the next week.

When I went back to Ron's for the last time, with the new case and the horn, Bill was able to remove the fabric to get at the pieces that were causing the problems. He cut them where necessary to insure everything fit well. He then glued the fabric back in place and we did the final fitting.

Finally, after 80 years, the bass had a new case!

In hindsight, if I were to do the whole case adventure all over again, certain things would be different. If you want to try this yourself, you really need to understand how the box is going to be upholstered. Almost everything that caused problems (and extra expense) with this project was a direct result of us having no experience with upholstery work.

Mistake number 1

Bruce had added a thin strip of metal around the opening of the box give it strength as well as create a perfect seal. This made the upholstery job more difficult. The vinyl outer covering had to be brought over the metal and down into the interior of the box a few inches to be stapled down on the wood. The interior fabric then had to be glued around the top rather than stapled.

Mistake number 2

Gluing the foam supports and the walls of the interior compartments into the box. The box really should have been upholstered first and then each piece upholstered before anything was glued down in place.

Mistake number 3

Not understanding the way things were going to be upholstered, we did not take into account that in some places there were as many as 4 layers of fabric. We failed to take into account that 4 layers of fabric would throw off our careful measurements and cause the horn not to fit.

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