Klarinet Archive - Posting 000040.txt from 2009/07

From: "Lelia Loban" <lelialoban@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] eefer reeds
Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2009 07:59:36 -0400

Richard D Bush wrote,
>You are running the risk of splitting the barrel
>wide open by removing the rings. If a cork
>happens to swell you could loose the barrel.
>The receiving sockets have rings on them for
>a reason...the same reason an old fashioned
>wooden bucket has bands around it; that being
>to give strength and hold it together. >

Please heed Richard Bush's warning! I'm not a professional repair tech, but
as the owner (I still pretend I'm not a collector...) of -- well, let's just
say "several" old clarinets, most of which I bought at flea markets and
junktique stores, I restore clarinets as a hobby. The most severe damage I
encounter in the instruments I decide not to buy (because they're beyond my
ability to fix) is severe cracking. The crack almost always runs through a
tenon or tenon socket and it happens more often on the barrel than anywhere
else. Usually, on a barrel, the crack runs the entire length of the barrel.
Often, that crack splits so wide open that if I hold the barrel up and look
through it as if it were a spyglass, I can see daylight all the way down the
crack. It's no coincidence that, in these especially bad cases, I usually
find one or both of the rings rattling around loose in the case -- and it's
apparent that the rings came loose and fell off first, before the barrel
cracked, because the crack has so grossly increased the diameter of the
barrel that the rings can't be slid back on again. I think simply closing
the crack wouldn't do the job: the buyer would need a new barrel, because
the internal dimensions of the old one change when the barrel splits wide
open that way. It's a Humpty Dumpty.

It's a lot cheaper to find and buy reeds that fit, and put that barrel ring
back on while the clarinet is still in sound condition.

Lelia Loban
http://members.sibeliusmusic.com/Lelia_Loban

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