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How can I determine the date?

Author: clarinet@55
Date: 2006-11-27 22:07

I have a Malerne b flat clarinet .I have posted on it before. I have a couple of questions concerning it. I am currently restoring it. It appears to have a wood grain,is black in color, but I recently read that Malerne may have manufactured them out of bakelite plastic as well as wood. While cleaning it , to prepare it for and bore oil treatment, I noticed that in places , around the finger chimneys, that it appears brown. It was this color prior to and after the cleaning. Is there any way to tell if it's wood and when it was made?
I've had this instrument since gradeschool (1960) and all thru high school.
I appreciate any help I can get here.
Thanks.

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Re: How can I determine the date?

Author: David Spiegelthal ★2017
Date: 2006-11-28 14:28

I can't help you with the date, but Malerne clarinets are generally from the 1940s through 1960s as best I can tell.

If your clarinet is not made of wood, then it is made of hard rubber (i.e. "mouthpiece material"), NOT bakelite, which was an early form of plastic used mainly as an electrical insulating material.

Hard rubber oxidizes over time to turn olive-greenish/brownish and has a slight sulfur odor. Even on wood clarinets, some of the tonehole chimneys were made of hard rubber and inserted into the wood, so that may be what you're seeing.

Wood or hard rubber, Malerne made pretty good clarinets.

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