Klarinet Archive - Posting 001412.txt from 1999/01

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: [kl] How to pad along for a bit
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 16:20:59 -0500

Here is a way to repair a defective pad. The idea is that it's a
temporary fix, but you'd be surprised at how long you can be tempted
to leave it like that....

There is a thin transparent plastic film that we call Clingfilm in UK,
Domopak in Italy.....

USA....dunno.

It's used to cover things like plates of salad in the refrigerator. It
comes in rolls.

You tear off a bit a couple of inches (5 cm) or a bit smaller across,
slide it under the pad, pull tight and wrap it over the top of the cup.

A good feature of this solution is that the plastic stretches over the
indentation in the pad that was made by the lip of the tonehole, so the
seal is *very* good, and self-adjusting.

This technique can be a lifesaver on period instruments, where you're
dealing with water-absorbent and labile boxwood, brass springs, leather
pads and flat toneholes.

The really extreme situation where the pad disintegrates can be handled
by using BluTak. (Are you sitting comfortably?)

There is a mildly adhesive chewing-gum-like substance called BluTak in
UK, (Hafties in Germany....) that is often used to stick posters up on
the wall, for example. (You roll a small bit of it between your fingers
until it softens, put it between the poster and the wall, and then
squeeze it into a disc by flattening the poster against the wall. This
creates a semi-permanent attachment.)

But BluTak, combined with clingfilm, can completely replace a pad. You
make the pad by wrapping a piece of BluTak in clingfilm, and then stick
it into the cup with another tiny bit of BluTak. Pressing it lightly
onto the tonehole completes the process. And you can almost always do
all of this without removing the key.

This is particularly useful, again, with old instruments. The curator
of a museum I visited once was completely astounded at how quickly I was
able to get some old clarinets going temporarily, leaving them exactly
as I found them at the end of my visit.

The upshot of all of this is that I always carry BluTak and Clingfilm
with me in my clarinet case. I've chopped a short bit off the roll of
Clingfilm so it's easy to keep in the case.

:-)

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE GMN family artist: www.gmn.com
tel/fax 01865 553339

.... Never take a beer to a job interview.

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