 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Kim
Date: 2000-04-12 21:56
I just bought my clarinet in January. Should I wait a year to see if the wood adjusts or should I have the wood shaven now? What happens is when the wood gets warm, it swells, and I have difficulty taking the middle two joints and the bell apart. Sometimes, the joints go on easily with a fair amount of cork grease. Could this be a cork problem, or a wood problem?
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Author: gRAHAM
Date: 2000-04-13 01:14
Kim,
I have had a wooden clarinet for about 9 months. that used to happen to me. It stopped after about 4 months. I just would only it for about half an our every day, not much more and no less, swabbing it regularly and it seemed to go away. It still gets bigger in heat and smaller in cold but it isnt as obvious.
Hope this helps,
Graham.
PS If it keeps it up for a long time you might want to have a repair person or private teacher look at it, Any wood you have taken of you cant put back on.
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Author: gRAHAM
Date: 2000-04-13 01:18
look 4 below your for cork problems posted by bob gardner and you will find 9 answers
graham
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Author: Drew
Date: 2000-04-13 17:43
Kim,
Only an instrument technician can determine the origin of the problem. This is very common with new clarinets. I recommend having this problem fixed by a reapir shop before a larger problem is created (bent keys, broken tenons, etc).
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Author: Lelia
Date: 2000-04-14 16:56
New instruments or freshly-recorked ones often feel tight. The repair tech makes the corks tight on purpose to give them room to pack down a little bit, so the joint doesn't end up too loose. But cork, being organic, doesn't always behave exactly the way the tech expects, and sometimes that new cork doesn't pack down enough. Probably your tech needs to sand that cork slightly.
It's a good idea to have the professional tech do this job. Sanding the cork sounds simple, but (as I know because I'm learning to do repair work) getting it slightly uneven (asymmetrical) can cause the instrument not to fit together properly. The tech has a machine sort of like a lathe, that will turn your clarinet steadily and let the tech remove exactly the same amount of cork all the way around.
If the tech wants to start messing around shaving down the wood, please reach escape velocity quickly, and find another tech. Unless something seriously bizarre happened during the manufacturing and inspection process, the sockets and tenons are almost certainly the right size, to factory specifications. The corks are *meant* to be replaceable and adjustable, so that's where the adjustment should be made.
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Author: Aaron Hayden
Date: 2000-04-14 22:42
Lelia,
Not all techs use a lathe or so-called machine to sand corks. For years we have been doing this by hand, with machine like results. I happen to have a lathe, but there are times when I will hand finish a cork. As far as shaving down the wood. Due to the close tolerances of the tenon to socket relationship, sometimes the wood will swell to a point that instead of the cork making contact with the socket the inside or outside shoulder of the tenon will contact the socket. The wood must be shaved to accommodate the swelling. This is done at the factory, but sometimes due to conditions the wood will swell. It only takes 1/1000's of an inch to cause this. Minor shaving will not harm the clarinet.
Aaron Hayden
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Author: Lelia
Date: 2000-04-16 22:10
I hand-sand, too, to be honest about it -- I can't afford the mechanical gizmo, since I'm not doing professional repair work. Before I learned how to get the corks right, I messed up and re-did quite a few of them (with a student-quality clarinet as the victim of these experiments...), even though I'm starting out in instrument repair work from a background as a professional stained glass restorationist. Maybe I'm stupider than average. Still, I think that a student who hasn't done this type of work before and hasn't been trained to do it probably shouldn't start by monkeying around with the clarinet. I think that for someone who doesn't plan to make a vocationl or at least an avocation out of clarinet repair, it's cheaper in the long run to let a pro do the job right the first time.
I'm surprised that wood will swell to the extent you describe! Makes me wonder (not for the first time...) whether kiln-drying really does an adequate job of curing the wood. Okay, if you say so, I retract what I said about not getting the wood shaved, but I still say to take a very good look and make sure the cork isn't the problem, before agreeing to this type of surgery on the wood. As someone else said, wood removed can't be replaced.
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Aaron Hayden wrote:
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Lelia,
Not all techs use a lathe or so-called machine to sand corks. For years we have been doing this by hand, with machine like results. I happen to have a lathe, but there are times when I will hand finish a cork. As far as shaving down the wood. Due to the close tolerances of the tenon to socket relationship, sometimes the wood will swell to a point that instead of the cork making contact with the socket the inside or outside shoulder of the tenon will contact the socket. The wood must be shaved to accommodate the swelling. This is done at the factory, but sometimes due to conditions the wood will swell. It only takes 1/1000's of an inch to cause this. Minor shaving will not harm the clarinet.
Aaron Hayden
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