TromboneChat

My son's gone for two years serving a religious mission, and when he gets back he'll be a music major with trombone as his primary instrument.

He's got a 1950s 2B silversonic that plays well and has a smooth slide. Ever since we bought it, there's been a weird little thing at the end of the stockings where it looks like maybe someone in the last 70 years maybe smacked the inner slide against the outer slide when putting it together (that's the only thing I can think of, but maybe there's another way it happened)

I've attached images of it. Both stockings are slightly out of round, one is more noticable than the other (which goes with my theory that someone tried putting the slide back together at too steep of an angle and with too much force once... But again: just a theory)
I've thought about taking it to someone like Osmon's (it's a few hours away, but it's not like I'm in a hurry) but ultimately I'm still not sure if it actually matters.

It seems like there's a big risk of overdoing it and making the problem worse? At the moment it doesn't impact the action of the slide and it's not rubbing anywhere (there's also no plating wear anywhere on the slide) so I'm also thinking to just leave it alone?

Would there be some slight impact on the sound? (Maybe it creates a small vortex or something?)

So the main reason I'm posting here are to get advice:

1 - is it worth fixing?
2 - is it likely an easy fix for a repair tech with proper slide mandrels etc, or is it going to be a big risk that the problem will get worse?

For that kind of horn (pretty nice) and that kind of damage, I'd just have at least the first inner slide replaced. I wouldn't play with the badly damaged one as is. It's possible that they could be re-rounded, but inner slide material is very hard, and prone to crack with a lot of re-working, and the first one you show might already have the start of a crack. Definitely get a tech's opinion, but be ready to replace at last the first inner. And you should have the outers looked at too. It's hard to imagine that kind of damage happened in an isolated way so as not to affect anything else.

I would have an excellent tech look at it and give you an assessment.

Bob Osmun is in the process of retiring, and as far as I know he has no other technician there. For this kind of work in the Boston area my recommendations would be:

Lou Anderson at Virtuosity in Boston
Jim Engele at New England Brass Works in Nashua
Aaron Beck in Wellesley

All three of them are first-class repair techs who will give you their honest opinion of the best solution.

That is an easy fix for a decent slide tech

When I repair student rental trombones in my current shop job, I can easily see 10 or more trombones with that type of damage in a single day. As Matthew stated, it is an easy fix and the slide can usually be returned to perfectly true with no trace of the damage.

I second the other comments. A competent slide tech should be able to solve the problem in less than 5 minutes. That said, I don’t think that it’s going to cause any real damage or affect your playing. I’d recommend the slide doctor https://slidedr.com/

Thanks for all the advice!

Nashua is a lot closer to me than Boston, I'll take it there in the next little while and have them take a look at it.