 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: melissa
Date: 2003-02-04 01:39
everyone always posts about their wooden clarients easaly cracking... In changes in humidity, temp etc... Extramem cold etc... I had my wooden clarinet for 4 years... dragging it to school every day... In the snow etc... it got dropped in the snow several times, played outside in the snow... Played in all types of conditions, nothing ever happened to it... Was i just lucky??
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Author: Ken
Date: 2003-02-04 02:11
yea, "dumb luck" if you treated your instrument like that.
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Author: Peter
Date: 2003-02-04 02:16
Don't jinx it!
By the way, what make and model is it?
Peter
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Author: Ralph G
Date: 2003-02-04 02:51
"That's a heck of a no-hitter you got goin' there, Mr. Koufax!"
Jinx!!! It's cracking tomorrow!
(I've got a horn that's blessed me similarly. I do believe I've just numbered its days...)
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Author: anon
Date: 2003-02-04 03:19
melissa wrote:
> nothing ever happened to it... Was i just lucky??
No you were not lucky. In fact, dropping a clarinet in the snow is a highly recommended technique for instantly curing an instrument that is playing too sharp.
For finer adjustments soak in water and use a whittling knife. Oops sorry...I think that was covered in another thread.
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Author: William
Date: 2003-02-04 15:12
I've know other clarinetists who have subjected their wood clarinets to similar environmental extremes "over ther years" with no harmful results (ie. leaving it overnight in a freezing car and playing it immediantly upon opening the case, etc). For me, I have been using my R13 Bb since 1964, trudging from home to rehearsals in all manner of weather here in the mid-west, and it has never cracked. The upper joint bore shrunk a bit, but that is normal and was corrrected by a master technician named MacGibbon from Milwaukee. It is probably that you--as others-- were lucky to pick a clarinet made with wood from the right woodpile, and not from some slightly inferior piece of board inclined to cracking under stress of temperature change. I would, however, recommended that you, at least, be a bit more dilligent in caring for your instrument. You never know for sure until it is too late.........
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Author: Tim
Date: 2003-02-04 16:21
I don't know. I just recently picked up my old clarinet from highschool. (grad 1973). I marched in all kinds of weather as did my brother after me. We did try to care for it by using bore oil on a regular basis. In has been in all sorts of storage since then. From my mothers attic (hot but humid delaware)and many diferent closets. As ordered by my mother-in-law who is a retired music teacher I am once again playing. for the last 20 + years no one has touched the instrument.
except for a old slighty leaking pads and a key that was taking from another instrument and filed to fit it works fine and NO CRACKS.
You people have me scared to even play the thing. what precautions should I take. I remember that the clarinet had a good sound and once my lips are in shape I hope to have a good sound again.
should I regulate the practice to preserve the wood??
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Author: ron b
Date: 2003-02-04 17:43
You an' me both, Melissa.
I have an 'old reliable', Moennig Bros (Albert), that has been with me through thick and thin for... well, longer than most young folks have been alive It's been out in the rain, snow, intense summer heat, humid, dry, dark, light and on and on.... and we've survived, none too much the worse for wear.
I wouldn't recommend treating an instrument like that but, when you're young and not too bright - you know, you do dumb things. And when you get older and not too bright, well... you get the idea:)
I still play the horn and it's still "Old Reliable". It's gone through a few sets of pads and I think I oiled it a couple of times 'way back when. Maybe the wood is from a particularly good batch (it appears to be quite dense, heavy) or I've just been, as you say, 'lucky', but I find some instruments hold up extremely well while others seem to barely hang in there.
I don't know the answer to your question, Melissa. But I'm glad you asked it. Gives one pause to think about our true personal values, doesn't it?
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Author: Wayne Thompson
Date: 2003-02-04 17:46
Tim, don't be scared. If you want, play it gradually for a week or so according to ordinary practice, but it is probably pretty secure from cracking. Read William's note again. I'm sure that if a clarinet cracks, it is heartbreaking, but most clarinets don't, whether treated perfectly or not. I don't remember anyone having a spare 'outside' clarinet in my marching band in the 60's; if anyone got a crack, I don't remember it.
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Author: melissa
Date: 2003-02-04 21:29
It is a Selmer, around the middle joint, the number is 287475. thats all i know of it... It marched with me for a while in the rain, left on turf in 100 degree weather. It was new when i got it, and had no clue what to do... I quickly found out that reeds DON'T go INTO the hole. Than about half way through band this year... i found out how freaked some people get... they refuse to even put their clarinet on the ground, nm even be dropped in the dirt and snow...
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Author: Bart Hendrix
Date: 2003-02-04 22:11
I come from an era when the only choice in materials was wood or metal -- and nobody in our high school band used metal clarinets. We did everything from 110 degrees (F) in the direct sun at the state fair to some rather cold and/or wet football games. Nobody had any problems with cracks.
Maybe there is something to the ideas that wood is not prepared as well as it used to be or a horn will either crack or not crack no matter how you treat it.
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Author: Lee
Date: 2003-02-04 22:59
My clarinet is a R13 bought when I was in Jr Hi in 1954. It went through all the usual rigors of marching in snow, rain heat etc. After College I laid off for fifteen years then when I returned I just oiled the keyworks and bore and started playing(?) with no other care. A good quality piece of wood will take a lot of abuse with out splitting.
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Author: Rick
Date: 2003-02-05 04:59
I may be going out on a long limb here, but I've been a amat. wood worker for many years and a lot of it has been doing turnings which is the same basic technique used to make clarinets. Here is what I know about making a stable turned piece.
You begin in one of two ways. You either turn green wood to very rough shape and then seal it and let it dry or you begin with dried wood. Either will work, but working with dried wood tends to produce more predictable and dimensionably stable results.
Once dried wood is dry and a sealer such as oil is used on it, it has very little dimensional instability, at least it is stable to the point that unless it is stressed against fixed points it will not crack. In turning and furniture making, cracking is a sign of either improper construction or using improperly dried wood.
Case in point are canes and pool cues. Both are made of wood, yet cracking is not a major issue of either. In the case of wood canes, they are exposed to extremes in weather as are many pool cues, yet they don't crack. Why, because as a rule they are properly dried and finished to begin with.
I have several slaps of Grenadilla in my workshop, they have been sitting in a room whose humidity varies from 30% in the winter to 85%+ in the summer with temps from 55-80 degrees. None of the slabs have cracked. Yes they have moved and to a degree warped as they dry, but crack no and once they reach equillibrium I'll begin working them.
This is indeed a rather simplistic overview of the issues involved, but fundementally I beleive it true. You could add in grain structure and a host of other issues, but the main point is the proper drying of blanks before turning. Ultimately my feeling is that if a clarinet is going to crack, it will do so and unless you go out of your way to accerbate the issue, you have very little control on the outcome.
If the wood blanks used for clarinets are not properly prepared and dried, but are rather turned slightly green then oiled to an excess in an attempt to stabilize them, then a certain percentage are going to crack. It strikes me that what we have is a numbers game. Mfr's could produce clarinets with very little chance of cracking but to do so requires an unprofitable amount of time in curing blanks, so instead they use a system that returns an acceptable number of cracked instruments.
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Author: Jim E.
Date: 2003-02-05 05:01
No, we didn't have secondary marching instruments because everyone (except me) had Bundys or other plastic horns. (I had a wooden student model B&H, it never cracked, but that's the only thing that didn't happen to it.) Good thing those were all plastic as all of the heating pipes for the school ran through the instrument storage room (and the chem lab store room above it.) It was easily 100 degrees in there during the winter with the doors closed. What an architech!
Back to the topic, Melissa, yes you were lucky.
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Author: Malaya
Date: 2003-02-08 16:17
My grandmother marched a Boosey & Hawkes Edgware in West Virginia when she was in HS in the late 50's early 60's, and now I use it in band here in southern Florida... It had a teeny crack in it when we refurbished it, and plays wonderfully. I marched it for one marching season (one too much, in my opinion) and decided it was time for a plastic marching horn after dropping it on concrete while running. (bent the 4 keys along the right side quite nicely, and gave me a sick stomach until it was back to it's original cond.) I think any instrument that is taken care of has a pretty good life expectancy. Keep it bore-oiled, swab it after playing/being exposed to humidity or rain, and blow warm air in it before playing. (Air conditioning is killer.) My Boosey is probably 50 years old, and it's still in near mint condition... Guess I'm another lucky one?
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