This trombone mouthpiece is an old King student line that has been used and much abused. When I first got the mouthpiece, the end of the shank was closer to a triangle more than a circle. The Rim of the cup was pitted, dented, and gouged pretty bad. The plating wasn't silver anymore; it had turned pretty dark, almost black. Last, the inside of the backbone was what looked like a various buffet of food, mold, and built up grim.
The first thing I had to do before I could start making repairs was to first get all the built up grim off the inside and outside. I tried first pickling it in a vinegar solution to see how the grim would break up, and I found that it was on there pretty bad. After the vinegar I went for a stronger pickle that did the job.
After cleaning I went straight to removing the large dents in the end of the shank. I used an arbor in the end of my bench motor with the mouthpiece inserted as far as it could go on the arbor. With my rawhide mallet I was able to fairly quickly hammer the end of the shank back to round.
The last task was to remove those ugly gouges you can see in the first picture up above. To remove the gouges I used a highly polished burnisher, mouthpiece receiver chucked in the lathe (tried bench motor, just too big to fit in the chuck), and some grease as a barrier for friction. After a little bit of work on my part, the rim looks (and should work) much better then before.
With just a little bit of work, this mouthpiece has now returned from its grave to be once again useful to some inspiring student.
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