 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Tropicana
Date: 2001-03-05 01:56
the silver keys on my new (well a few months) are tarnishing!!!!!1 what can i do?
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Author: Corey
Date: 2001-03-05 02:12
do you polish the keys after every performance? i do that's why my clarinet with silver plated keys is still shiny (almost a year old)
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2001-03-05 02:46
If you do a search on the BBoard you'll find a number of posting dealing with this problem, especially IRT the 3M no-tarnish strips.
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Author: Don Poulsen
Date: 2001-03-05 13:59
Just a couple of quick tips. First, remove anything rubber, such as rubber bands from your case. They outgas sulfur, which reacts with silver to create tarnish. Second, another option to the 3M no-tarnish strips would be to put a cachet filled with activated charcoal in your case. One place the charcoal can be found is among the fish supplies in a pet store.
I also suspect that someone living where there are greater concentrations of sulfur in the air, such as near refineries or Yellowstone Park, might have more problems with tarnish.
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Author: Joey
Date: 2001-03-05 15:33
Ditto on the sulfur concentration. However, if you can't take out rubber items from your case, ie: ligs, mpcs etc... Try wrapping them in a sealable bag like a zip lock to trap the escaping sulfur that is released from playing. My clarinet prof told me he had the same problem until he wrapped his rubber mouthpiece in a little bag, no tarnish since.
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Author: Ken Shaw
Date: 2001-03-05 17:05
Tropicana -
Rejoice at the tarnish. Shiny keys are too slippery. Really. I always tell repair shops not to polish my keys. I'm much more comfortable with them dull. If I have trouble sliding from the right hand Ab/Eb key down to F#/C#, I rub my little finger on the side of my nose to pick up a little grease, which works perfectly. I'd much rather have too much friction than too little.
I'd rather look like an old pro, with an instrument I've been playing for a million years.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2001-03-05 17:20
This site may give you clues as to why. Wool? Onions? etc.
Sorry, I did not give the site.
http://www.silversmithing.com/care.htm
If it is corroding so fast it would be good to identify the cause.
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Author: Hiroshi
Date: 2001-03-08 04:50
As to little fingers, the more slippery, the faster pinkey fingerings.
I take my nose oil to make them slippery.
By the way, after playing I use Muramatsu flute hi-tech cloth to clean keys.
And I patched a 6"x6" odor absorbent sheet inside the case.
Although I bought this at a musical shop, odor absorbent inside shoes such
as Odor-Eater(trade mark) may work too.
Not only sulfur but also zinc causes silver tarnish. Zinc is included in eggs.
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Author: Donn
Date: 2001-03-08 20:30
If you do too much polishing on silver-plated keys, you soon won't have any silver left to polish.
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2001-03-08 23:46
Hiroshi: Good point about the shoe odour eaters. They are proably far more activated charcoal for you money than special anti-tarnish cloths for silver.
Zinc?? Silver + sulphur compounds = Silver Sulphide which is black. And Silver + Chlorine compounds = Silver Choloride which goes black on exposure to light. But I have never heard of a chemisry associated with Silver and Zinc. Can you enlighten me.
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Author: Bart Hendrix
Date: 2001-03-09 18:22
I expect the reference to zinc is in error. Eggs cause silver to tarnish because of the sulfur content. Zinc and silver are both transition metals and, in the absence of some additional element or elements in the molecule, are unlikely to react with each other directly (they both have positive oxidation numbers). Zinc is alloyed with copper to form brass without an adverse reaction. Copper is in the same group as silver (the coinage metals) and would, as a result, be expected to be chemically similar to silver.
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Author: Corey
Date: 2001-03-11 01:30
i polish my keys everyday and they are still beautiful and shiny and that thing with the nose is very,very disgusting! eww!
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Author: DrBert
Date: 2001-04-03 17:45
I polish mine once a week, I went down and bought a cheap $1.99 cloth for silver plated finishes, its just this little cloth that has some polish in the cloth, and I use that. My keys are nice and shiny.
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