Klarinet Archive - Posting 000292.txt from 2000/02

From: "Dee D. Hays" <deehays@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] alcohol and mouthpieces
Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2000 20:45:30 -0500

----- Original Message -----
From: "George W. Kidder III" <gkidder@-----.org>
Subject: Re: [kl] alcohol and mouthpieces

> I can vouch for the damaging effect of very strong ethanol (95%) on a
> (fortunately cheap) plastic mouthpiece - it cracked it! I do not know
what
> the effect would be on hard rubber, or whether a more reasonable
> concentration (say 50%) would have done anything, or whether the alcohol
> used in the pre-loaded wipers (iso-propanol, I think) would be as
damaging.
> Don't have enough cheap mouthpieces to experiment on!
>

How do you know it was the alcohol and not something else? Without doing a
detailed analysis that might include examination by an electron scanning
microscope and a gas chromatograph and perhaps some other tests, you cannot
know this. Even testing a sizable sample of plastic mouthpieces would
really prove it as the experimenter *may* be doing something in conjunction
with the experiment that biases the results.

Anecdotal evidence can only act as a springboard for further scientific
investigations. In and of themselves, they can prove nothing.

Dee Hays
Canton, SD

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