 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: janlynn
Date: 2003-02-20 00:34
my student is concerned that her barrel rings are loose. she had her first lesson last week and they were not loose until she took her clarinet out of her house. am i right in thinking that this was caused by the cold weather? its a Buffet R13. am i also correct that she shouldnt be too concerned about it? how does she get them to tighten up - just wait for it to get warm?
thanks, JL
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Author: Rick
Date: 2003-02-20 00:53
Hi:
Its probably more a matter of humidity than temperature. My clarinet did the same thing and it didn't have a chance to get cold.
It does however need to be fixed and now not later. It is a very simple repair by a tech, so send her off to the music store and have it done before she cracks a barrel.
RW
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Author: Henry
Date: 2003-02-20 01:04
Also see my thread on "Loose tenon rings" about 8 pages back. I had the same problem with my Leblanc LL. As Rick says, it's indeed the low humidity that causes it (aggrevated by winter). I fixed it with strips of cigarette paper added between the rings and the wood. But, unless you are very handy and careful, I would also suggest to have a tech take care of it. I agree that it is indeed a rather simple procedure.
Henry
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Author: Julia
Date: 2003-02-20 01:33
how would the tech fix it though? you don't want it so that when the humidity rises again for the ring to be too small, and the barrel to crack then.
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Author: JMcAulay
Date: 2003-02-20 01:48
As I have written countless (well, almost) times, a loose ring is the Clarinet saying "I need oil." Shrinkage due to drying of the wood is the primary cause of a loose ring, and replacing the lost moisture with a *proper* oil is the best thing to do, IMO. I now use and suggest "Bore Doctor," sold by BB sponsor Doctor Omar Henderson.
Regards,
John
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Author: Peter Spriggs
Date: 2003-02-20 02:39
Janlynn,
Here is an excerpt from my "Clarinet Care" book.
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RINGS
Rings should be tight. If they are loose, they should be tightened by shimming them with paper. At piece of black garbage bag also works well. If any of the rings are loose and the joint is a tight fit, a crack could result at that point.
Using the garbage bag method, first remove the ring.
Then place a piece of the bag over the area the ring slides onto and push the ring back in only not quite all the way in. Trim off the bag on both sides of the ring with a razor blade or sharp knife and then push the ring all the way on. If the ring was exceptionally loose, you may have to use two thicknesses rather than one.
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Be sure to put the ring back on the correct way. There is a top and bottom. Loose rings are primarily caused by a lack of humidity. Try adding a "Dampit" to your case as well.
Peter
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Author: Laur
Date: 2003-02-20 03:46
Put orange peels in your case. This will add humidity in your case and the loose rings with tighten naturally !
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Author: L. Omar Henderson
Date: 2003-02-20 03:55
Humidity, Hunidity - the curse and the cure. I leave the fix-it to the experts but the cause is known. Of course you add a lot of humidity to the bore when you play (so practice more !!!) but the ambient relative humidity between times can cause the wood to loose moisture and shrink if the RH is well below 50% - the case in many heated buildings during Winter if there is not a humidifier on the HVAC system. During the Summer, at least here in the South, the RH can stay at 80%+ and the wood will swell. The cure is to keep a micro-environment for the horn during non-use by adding humidity (e.g. a Dampit or homemade humidifier) and remove humidity (a desiccant) when the RH is high - both should be monitored.
How do you know what the RH is? - buy a hygrometer (RH meter) - as inexpensive as a chemical strip all the way to a minature digital hygrometer. Inexpensive ($5-$10) dial type hygrometers used in cigar humidors can be purchased on EBay or a cigar store. (Some of the cheaper hygrometers can be off by plus or minus 5%+ but if you put a solution of saturated salt water in a cup and the hygrometer in a sealed plastic container the meter should read 65% RH after full equilibration - correct your readings from there - I'll give a cook book approach on the BB sometime). The range in which a horn, which has the proper oil content, should be dimensionally stable is 45-65% RH. At around 50% RH or less mold and mildew will not grow in the case.
The Doctor
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Author: sinkdraiN
Date: 2003-02-20 12:19
My barrel cracked very fast because the rings became loose. The previous owner tried to use tape and paper to keep the rings secure. A tech must tighten the rings to prevent cracking. Its aa very simple procedure. This device squeezes the rings to the desired size. Paper and tape will not prevent a crack. The rings must be tightened.
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Author: Bob
Date: 2003-02-20 12:35
If the rings were tight ,i.e. OK, and then became loose it was primarily due to low humidity. Correcting or attempting to correct this condition mechanically with paper or plastic is, in my opinion, not the route to follow. Rather one should restore the lost moisture content in the wood. If one uses the mechanical route and then the moisture content rises the extra pressure on the wood could cause a problem e.g. tight fit then you forcing the fit and eventually cracking the wood in the barrel or the upper joint tenon. A good homemade item is to take a plastic pill bottle or film canister, drill some holes in one end and/or the cap and insert a wet piece of sponge. Check periodically and remoisten the sponge as necessary. Certainly Doc's comments are appropriate.
(Loose rings on a new instrument is another subject and in this case the instrument should be returned to the seller for correction.)
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Author: janlynn
Date: 2003-02-20 13:15
Thank You everyone - I will pass on the information to my student and put it in my notes for future reference.
JanLynn
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2003-02-21 13:23
iI use shellac, melted to the inside of a warm ring before putting hte ring on.
I disagree with sinkdraiN. The rings need to be secure enough to stop the timber from being opened up with splits when a tenon is inserted, exerting radial force from inside the timber. The rings do not have to be so tight as to put compressive forces on the timber.
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Author: sinkdraiN
Date: 2003-02-22 02:26
Gordon (NZ)- I enjoy reading your posts all over the net. My repair tech told me that "its a good thing I got my rings fixed when i did because the body could have cracked." Is that true? Is there any correlation between loose rings and cracks? Did my repair tech fix my ring incorrectly by using that "machine press" device?
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Author: contragirl
Date: 2003-02-22 03:21
I had a barrel that started out having loose rings, so putting a thin strip of paper around the wood, and putting the rings over it worked just fine.
Then my tech friend apoxied them on for me when he had to size it to fit my clarinet.
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2003-02-22 11:19
I have never used a band shrinking press, so I may be well out of line, but the difficulty I have with this method is an imagined possibility of OVER-shrinking the rings, such that the open end of the tenon socket has a smaller inside diameter than the other end. I have often encountered this condition, but am not sure whether rings are to blame. If they are, then it is entirely likely that the condition was established at manufacture, especially as not many technicians have or use these shrinking dies now.
I think there is a little overreaction to loose tenon socket rings. Rings would have to be significantly loose before they contributed to tenon sockets splitting. When the timber is subject to radial force exerted by the tenon cork (or by the tenon timber itself if it is swollen or the alignment is crooked during assembly), it will be subect to expansion ('strain') from tension forces around its circumference. Splitting occurs only when these forces exceed the tensile strength inherent in the timber itself immediately under the ring. Unless the ring is very loose, it will offer support before this limit is reached.
IMHO when rings are SLIGHTLY loose the issue is more one of the convenience of them not falling off during handling, rather than serious risk of splitting.
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Author: janlynn
Date: 2003-02-22 18:34
just want to give an update here ... i saw my student last night. i had sent her a msg to try and fix the humidity first and told her how to make a 'dampit' - within a day and a half the rings which were falling off are beginning to tighten. also, the metal ring around the bell was loose and is now tightening too. so ... fixing the humidity works!
JL
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Author: Henry
Date: 2003-02-22 22:47
This confirms what I was thinking (and have expressed in a previous thread). Only uptake or loss of MOISTURE can swell or shrink the wood, because wood is hydrophilic. Oiling by itself does NOT swell dried-out wood and therefore does NOT tighten loose rings, as I have concluded from my own experimentation. This suggests the following procedure: FIRST expose the clarinet to elevated humidity until the rings are tight again; THEN oil the wood to saturation to prevent rapid reloss of moisture. This may restore the equilibrium that prevents this problem from reoccurring (at least with occasional reoiling).
Any thoughts?
Henry
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2003-02-23 09:50
Unless I am mistaken, the "Doctor" claims that his specially selected bore oil is hydrophilic, to the extent that it buffers the moisture content in the timber, supposedly eliminting any need for a humidifer.
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Author: Henry
Date: 2003-02-23 18:51
Gordon, I know the "Doctor" claims that. But I assume his oil is a simple triglyceride ("vegetable") oil which is not paricularly hydrophilic, as attested by the extremely low solubility of water in these oils. I used his bore oil in an attempt to make the wood swell and tighten my barrel rings but to no avail. The best these oils may do is to slow the evaporation/uptake of water into the wood. So prehydration of the wood would seem to be a must.
Henry
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Author: L. Omar Henderson
Date: 2003-02-24 16:15
Dear Folks – the short answer, and then the long answer. The short answer – I tread as lightly as a frog crossing the pond by stepping on lily pads when it comes to technical issues and leave those to the experts. My only experience with tightening tenon rings was watching an expert wack a ring tightening apparatus with a hammer with about the same skill needed as Tiger Woods applying a 3 Iron to an approach shot. The other types of solutions are the province of those expert at fixing the problem. Apparently (an unscientific survey) many newer clarinets develop loose tenon rings. IMHO if the ring is only slightly loose and does not fall off or rotate and wobble in rotation it is within the range that hydration, oiling, and temperature change will not compromise the structural integrity of the wood (i.e. crack) if the tenon end is properly sized. Added RH in the clarinet’s environment often makes the rings tight, underoiled wood will benefit from addition of oil that will also swell the wood. A consultation with a good repair person is the best advice after trying a little added RH and/or oil if needed.
The long answer is the 80 foot tree that transports hundreds of gallons of water to the top-most branches daily (a recent lecture to graduate multidisciplinary engineering students studying fluid transport in rockets escaping the earth’s gravitational field – the tree struggles less than the rocket !!!!). It does this by structural: pores, channels, dikes, active gates, capillary tubes – physical: capillary action, transporation, evaporation, hydrophilic – hydrophobic interactions, - chemical: photosynthesis, hydration energy shells, sol-gel interactions, salt gradients, etc..
The plant oils are a special type of molecule with a hydrophilic surface and a hydrophobic core. These oil molecules have unique water handling characteristics unlike many other triglyceride molecules and also petroleum derived oil. These oils have special side chain functional groups not found in many animal lipid systems. A layer of water is tightly bound to the surface of these oil molecules (layer of hydration) and increasing shells of water that are less and less tightly bound can be added or removed from the surface. These oil molecules interact with the capillary tubes in wood to hold and maintain a stable moisture level within the wood. Collapse of the capillary tubes and/or depletion of the oil used to hold moisture and interact with the wood structure can cause wood to shrink and change dimensional conformation. A certain amount of shrinkage due to the energy of a dehydration gradient is easily reversed by adding moisture to the environment.
Although photosynthesis and transporation are no longer active in clarinet wood, the system of pores, channels, capillary tubes, water-locked dikes, and hydrated oil molecules still functions and contributes to the water retention and dimensional stability of the wood. Plant derived oils do contain (on the surface) water, and adding these hydrated oils to wood will contribute to an overall increase in the moisture level of wood and the wood’s ability to maintain a moisture balance within given parameters. In order to function properly the moisture balance of wood is dependent on the intact architecture of the wood pores, channels, and oil surrounded capillary tubes. In a properly functioning wood system there are not severe elevations or depletions of hydration of the wood due to the architecture and the oil.
The Doctor
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Author: Henry
Date: 2003-02-24 16:59
Omar:
I knew and hoped that you would jump in at some point to counter my, perhaps provocative, statements. Let me make it clear that I like your products! I am using almost all of them, including your bore oil and, so far, I have no complaints. All I'm saying is that my conclusions are based on, what I think is, solid experimental evidence. I first "fixed" my rings by putting strips of cigarette paper under the rings. This improved the situation considerably. However, the barrel and bell rings still rotated slightly when some torque was applied. In an attempt to tighten the rings even more, I applied your bore oil inside and outside in the recommended way, i.e., over several days until the wood was obviously saturated (excess oil remained after 24 hours of the last application). At this point, the rings still rotated to the same extent under torque. That means to me that the oil had not led to any swelling of the wood (only a tiny degree of swelling would have been sufficient to completely tighten the rings at that point). That leads me to the conclusion that you have to bring in moisture first (this will undoubtedly swell the wood), followed by the bore oil. What's wrong with my argument?
Henry
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Author: L. Omar Henderson
Date: 2003-02-24 17:50
Dear Henry,
The wood, oil, water is an interactive system and as such it requires elements from each to have an effect. I am not saying that your observations are not valid. There are many variables that contribute to, or detract from, wood swelling. Adding oil to a piece of wood which is deficient in oil will increase the moisture level (now this is a relative term because the amount of moisture attached to the oil molecule is small - granted), but will also allow the capillary tubules in the wood to attract and hold more moisture than an oil deprived tubule (a significant amount). Adding oil to wood that has sufficient oil but in a dehydrating environment (below 50% RH) will not significantly swell the wood because the bulk of moisture is held in the wood structure not on the oil and the wood is already replete with oil just severely deficient in moisture to add to the hydration levels of the oil and swell the capillary tubules. In this case adding moisture will cause the wood to swell. Wood that has collapsed capillary tubules, blocked channels and pores will be relatively insensitive to either moisture addition and/or added oil and is more a reflection of the bulk effects of environment on the horn. There is always the "stuff happens" effect for which scientists and technicians have no explanation.
The Doctor
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