 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Lelia
Date: 1999-05-04 22:56
What's a pad bug? I know what it does (eats clarinet pads), but what species is it? And does it eat the leather or the felt or both?
(And is this a pedantic question or what?)
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Author: Dee
Date: 1999-05-04 23:31
According to an item that I read on the internet, these may be carpet beetles. They would go for the felt pads and the case lining but not leather pads.
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Author: Mark P.
Date: 1999-05-05 03:57
Two clarinets I bought on eBay had pads infested with bugs that had eaten the pads. The pads had an almost sculptured appearence, having had the skin and felt eaten in small bites. I had the clarinets overhauled and the tech put the clarinets in a box and the cases in the dumpster....LOL
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Author: ron
Date: 1999-05-05 05:41
Lelia,
A repairman friend told me those little nasties are mites. If you're looking for a preventive measure in the future, I've had good results with plain mothballs. I know, they stink. But a few crystals of them sprinkled in the case seem to do the trick.
Ron
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Author: J.Butler
Date: 1999-05-05 16:18
Actually moth balls are a little much. These critters don't like the ink used in newsprint. Just take a few strips of newspaper and put in your case, it'll keep them out. Be sure to replenish your supply of newsprint a couple of times a month because as the ink gets old it loses it's effectiveness. Learned this one a long time ago through a great tech by the name of Bob Hester. Bob used to run the repair tech school at Houston Community College before they shut it down a few years back. They have just recently started it up again offering just one class per week and a lab the rest of the week. Bob teaches the class on Wednesdays if any one is interested get in touch with Aubrey
Tucker at HCC or H&H Music in Houston. H&H is sponsering the program.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 1999-05-05 18:29
J.Butler wrote:
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Actually moth balls are a little much. These critters don't like the ink used in newsprint.
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Bugs _love_ our newspaper's ink! They use the new soy oil base. The only reason I know is because we use newsprint as mulch in our garden & the pictures get eaten!
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Author: J.Butler
Date: 1999-05-05 20:44
Perhaps Mark is right. I don't know about the soy based oil in the newsprint. Maybe I'd better check with my local paper and see what kind of ink they are using now.
Thanks,
J. Butler
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Author: Don Poulsen
Date: 1999-05-05 20:55
Pad bugs, pad bugs, whatcha gonna do?
Whatcha gonna do when they come to chew?
--Theme song to COPS (Clarinet Old Pad Snackers)
(Sorry, but I couldn't help myself.)
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Author: Lelia
Date: 1999-05-05 23:49
Don Poulsen wrote:
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Pad bugs, pad bugs, whatcha gonna do?
Whatcha gonna do when they come to chew?
--Theme song to COPS (Clarinet Old Pad Snackers)
(Sorry, but I couldn't help myself.)
Bad boy, bad boy.
LOL!
Thanks for the information and suggestions, everyone!
Re. mothballs, I just wrote a booklet about incense, including some recipes and an encyclopedia, for which I did a lot of research on ingredients. My husband works for the pesticides division of the EPA, so toxicity of pesticides is a subject of interest around here. Camphor, the active ingredient in mothballs, is also an ingredient in some old incense recipes. I learned that natural camphor is toxic, while the synthetic camphor used in most modern mothballs is so much more toxic that I wrote a strong caution against ever including it in homemade incense. The smoke is toxic, but more to the point for a clarinetist, synthetic camphor is poisonous when ingested. To a lesser degree, natural camphor is also toxic to ingest, although it's been included in some medications for centuries. I'd recommend against putting mothballs (even all-natural ones) in a child's clarinet case and recommend against the synthetic mothballs in anybody's case. The problem is that the case is a small, closed environment. Camphor (natural or synthetic) is highly volatile, which is why mothballs shrink as they age. The porous reeds, the corks or even the wood can soak up the stuff as it volatilizes. Aside from the possibility of the reeds absorbing a toxin, the clarinet could end up stinking of mothballs. I notice nobody recommended pest strips (the kind people hang in a basement) and I certainly hope nobody's using those in a case!
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Author: Mario
Date: 1999-05-06 16:38
By the way, this is a good thread: A problem, some potential solutions, things to watch, a nice piece of humor thrown in.
This is what this Board is all about.
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