Author: jeremyreeds
Date: 2010-11-20 02:36
I have always used almond oil with very good results, I have a 1971 Marigaux (Prestini system) which (thanks God, or the oil) has never cracked. I am sure (as many of you are) that wood is affected by humidity/dryness, and it will expand/contract accordingly. The purpose of the oil is so that the wood absorbs the least humidity so that it expands or contracts the least. I have always oiled my instrument with almond oil because that is what my teacher told me and "that was it". Nowadays I think it was not a bad idea and could not have hurt, but with my experience in reparing and restoring instruments, something that so far I do as a hobby, I think that there is another reason for this to happen.
In my oppinion, the culprit is the fact that we use metal inserts in the wood, and even though metal may not contract/expand by humidity, it is affected by temperature, and at certain moments we find wood and metal oposing each other in their expansion/contraction movements. To illustrate this it is easier to go back in time to the wooden flutes pre-Boehm. Hardly any of the head joints of these flutes has survived without a crack, a huge crack that runs all the way from the embouchure hole down to the bottom of the head joint, where it joints the barrel. The embouchure has a metal lining which is also a tuning slide (if my memory serves me well), and this metal lining expands faster? , and for different reasons, than the wood that surounds it, causing the wood to crack. Now in an oboe when you find a crack in the bell, it usually runs on the wood on top of the metal lining (socket?) and stops on the low B tone hole ( Bb pad). When you find a crack in the midle section of an oboe, it usually runs on the wood on top of the metal lining (socket?) and stops in the G tone hole (F# pad/ 1st. right hand finger). In this 2 sections of the oboe the consequences are not disastrous because the size of those tone holes can "absorved the damage" , but on the top section of the oboe, the reed socket is a killer.
If I was a manufacturer, who really cared about my customers, and the potetial problems that I would have to face due to cracking, I would make oboes without metal sockets or at the very least without reed sockets (in metal).
I hope my english writing is understandable.
Regards.
Jeremias
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