Klarinet Archive - Posting 000653.txt from 1999/05

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Floating witches and clarinets
Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 00:33:59 -0400

Re. checking for leaks on the Selmer Barbier clarinet I'm restoring, I wrote,
> This involves quite a lot of squeaking and hooting, bound to evoke *some*
sort of demons, so she's been looking for them along the top of the bedroom
curtain rod and in other interesting places.>

Richard Bush wrote,
>>Do it with a feeler gauge. Drapes will stay intact.>>

I've tried the feeler gauge and can't find any pad leaks with it. I also
tried a leak light in a dark room. I think I can tell the difference between
the bright sliver of light that represents a leak and the soft light that
comes through the translucent pads, but I can't find any leaks that way,
either. (I almost wish Shadow would take the easy way up by climbing the
drapes, now that she's getting older, but she makes a mighty leap all the way
from the dressing table to the narrow top of the closet door and jumps from
there across the door to the top of the rod!)

The Barbier is a metal clarinet. Right now, the whole upper register squeaks
and the lower register is hard to blow, especially the bottom stack, with the
same mouthpiece and reed I've been using on other clarinets with no problems.
Maybe I need to put the horn away for a few days and then check it again, in
case I overlooked something obvious, but the pads all seem tight. The barrel
has an inner sleeve. The upper stack tenon inserts between those two walls
of the barrel and the inner sleeve. I re-corked the tenon. It fits tightly.
Is it possible that somehow there's an air leak in that double-walled joint,
between the inside edge of the tenon and the inner wall of the barrel? The
outside of the lower edge of the barrel has a slight distortion and a gouge,
as if the barrel got dropped on a hard surface. It looks like superficial,
cosmetic damage, but...?

>>Another possibility is to shackle left front leg of cat to right back
leg--let swim in a rain barrel for two hours. If the cat is still alive, it
is not a witch.>>

I know you're joking, but during the witchcraft hysteria, people really did
do things like that to cats, and much worse. This cat already got
water-tested. Nine years ago, as a tiny stray kitten, Shadow showed up,
soaked, shivering and crying on the doorstep, in a spring storm of mixed
rain, slush and snow. Whoops, I hope She Who Must Be Obeyed doesn't find out
I let on about her grubby origins as a street stray.... But since she
survived, I guess that makes her a witch, all right, so maybe she did put the
whammy on this clarinet....

Thanks for the advice--
Lelia
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"When I play with my cat, who knows whether I do not make her more sport than
she makes me?"
--Montaigne, "Essays," Book II, Chapter 12, 1580.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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