Author: corks&pads
Date: 2006-03-02 14:38
Great responses!
The bit that I'll add is that you need to consider the overall value of the instrument when deciding not only how to repair it, but whether it's worth being repaired. If it's a resin intro-level student model, I'd be inclined to have a tech glue it as a temporary fix, keeping in mind that it's going to need to be replaced sooner or later. That's not necessarily a bad thing, since the owner will eventually want to upgrade.
If it's a better instrument (I'd arbitrarily say the equivalent of a Buffet E11, or better), and the crack isn't disastrous, having it pinned is probably a reasonable thing to do. Keep in mind that there are cracks, and there are CRACKS. While I'm relatively new to clarinet repair, I'm not new to woods. A split into the bore that opens a side of a tone hole is fairly major. I agree with one posting about cracks going into holes ... the hole can act as a stress reliever and often prevents further spread (a common practice in aircraft aluminum repair is to "stop drill" a round hole at the end of a crack before beefing the area up with a reinforcement plate). On the other hand, if that crack is widening as the instrument is played, pretty substantial repairs are in order.
Emerging cracks (not going through to the bore) can be stabilized with threaded pins, as Dave S. points out. In some other wood applications, such cracks are often considered "checking, " and aren't necessarily a big deal, but in a wooden clarinet I'd pin them to hold them at bay, and probably do a cosmetic fill of the fissure.
The one comment that I find puzzling is the tech who wanted a crack opened as wide as possible to fill it. I have a different opinion. Spreading a crack wider and filling it keeps constant circumferencial (sp?) stress on the joint. I'd want to have it as close to closed as possible, pinning the wood to hold it in that position. Once that was done, and depending on the nature of the crack, I *might* try to slightly widen the surface area along the crack by removing a bit of wood. That's so I could add a filler that would give some additional support, but which would be mainly cosmetic.
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The Clarinet BBoard
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