 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: JC
Date: 2001-01-08 15:42
I've heard that the Buffet Green line clarinets are basically high-quality plastic clarinets but have read that they're 95% grenadilla wood. Does this make them have the vulnerability of cracking etc. still or does the 5% carbon fiber get rid of that? Thanks!
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Author: Dee
Date: 2001-01-08 16:23
Think of the grenadilla as the "filler" for the plastic. The wood is actually ground to a sawdust or powder. The resin then coats all this and binds it together. The fact that the filler is wood powder rather than something else shouldn't lead to cracking.
Normal wood billets crack along the grain as there is substantially less strength in this direction. Eliminate the grain and it becomes immune to cracking. Unless of course you do something destructive like drop it or hit it.
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Author: graham
Date: 2001-01-08 17:00
Howarths in London said to me that these instruments were prone to cracking compared to plastic equivalents but less so than wood. But they did not say why.
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Author: Brent
Date: 2001-01-08 17:44
Do thay have any data? This may be a perception that has no basis in fact.
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Author: Todd H.
Date: 2001-01-08 22:43
Buffet Greenline's have a little graphite fiber mixed into the wood dust and resin composite, a little bit of long fiber really strengthens this sort of matrix. (Buffet advertising says %5 graphite, but doesn't say whether that is a percentage of volume or weight.) There aro no "grain lines" in the greenline material, so the longitudunal cracking that wood clarinets can get is'nt going to happen with them.The possible weak area of greenline would seem to me to be right at the corner of the tenon shoulder cut. Excessive undercut of this area or a burred cutter tool could easily put too much of a machine mark/groove in the thinner tenon wall and create a stress riser area there.
Howarth also makes a fine clarinet using some kind of plastic, but I'm not sure what material it really is.Does anybody on the BB know?
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Author: Slow
Date: 2001-01-09 10:28
The Buffet Greenline are high quality, and will not crack under the normal conditions under which a wood clarinet would crack (e.g. extreme changes of temperature or humidity will not crack the instrument).
However, if you drop the clarinet on a hard floor, it may break into pieces, and get damaged more than a plastic or even wood clarinet, because of the molecular structure of the mixed resin and wood powder material.
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Author: Slow
Date: 2001-01-09 10:35
Just for information, Buffet claims: "We also have a new manufacturing process called Green Line that was developed a few years ago. We use the dust of the Grenadilla wood that is not used when making our 100% Grenadilla instruments. The wood powder (95%) is mixed with a special formula (5%) of epoxy glue and carbon fiber in an oven. Sixty tons of pressure are applied to the mixture so that it has the same density as regular Mpingo Grenadilla wood".
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Author: Kathy
Date: 2001-01-09 15:57
One other thing about Greenlines that doesn't really get mentioned very often - it doesn't look like a plastic clarinet, even close up. It looks and IMO feels like a wood clarinet. Of course, there's no grain to be seen, but it would take careful examination to see this. I've been in clarinet sections in a couple of different bands, and the clarinet players next to me were surprised to find out I was playing a Greenline, because they couldn't tell just by looking.
I love my Greenline to the degree I would highly recommend it over wood.
Kathy
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Author: Beecea
Date: 2001-01-09 20:01
I too have a green line, and agree with Kathy that it does not look like plastic. In fact, Buffet stamps on a small green dot, I think so that people will know. I also found the greenline to play and feel better.
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Author: beejay
Date: 2001-01-12 10:31
The material is extremely hard, to the extent that Buffet Crampon has to use special machine tools to make Greenline clarinets. . The Greenline project arose from a realization that 1. high quality blackwood is in increasingly short supply and 2. BC was throwing away enornmous quantities of very high quality wood, since billets with a flaw are rejected and a lot of wood is left over after the bore is pierced. Because the material is so resistant to cracking, it's recommended for places where there are large temperature or humidity extremes. I believe it is now used for all BC oboes.
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2001-01-14 14:32
For the greenie background look at this mpingo (= grenadilla = clarinet timber) site:
http://www.blackwoodconservation.org/index.html#map
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