 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: AS
Date: 2008-03-11 21:15
I've heard that swabbing a mouthpiece is regarded by many as a demonstration of brutality against the mouthpiece. All right, even though I don't quite believe that silk swab could wear out mouthpiece, I can accept that there might be a theoretical possibility that internal size of a mouthpiece could be incresed by, say, 0,01 mm in 50 years of intense daily swabbing. So soap, vinegar, lemon juice, specialized solutions are being used instead.
There is a piece of equipment called ultrasonic cleaner. As far as I understand, it works by emitting ultrasonic waves in water and is used for cleaning dirty jewelry, glasses etc. You put the dirty thing in the container with water, close the lid, push the button and wait for 5-10 minutes. No rubbing, no brushing whatsoever. As commercials say, it does work, but you know about commercials... Anybody has first hand experience or perhaps has even tried it on mouthpieces? I guess that if it works on dirty jewelry, it should clean moutpieces just as well, shouldn't it?
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Author: tictactux ★2017
Date: 2008-03-11 21:30
I own one, we used it for cleaning the big chandelier in the hall.
The maximum time you'd want to leave your stuff in the cleaner is some 60 seconds. I usually add a knife tip of dishwasher powder in the water (borax would be sufficient) and have the device hum for a minute.
Tried it with keys, but nothing beats a good buffing job. Dunno about mouthpieces, I just rinse mine after use and blow-dry (by mouth) it.
(I once put a poor sacrifice mpc into the dishwasher - the cork was a little brittle afterwards but else - no problem.)
For a mouthpiece it's overkill, IMHO.
--
Ben
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2008-03-11 21:40
Many oboists swear by the ultrasonic cleaner for reeds. A small one is available for around $35.
Ken Shaw
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Author: L. Omar Henderson
Date: 2008-03-11 21:42
(Disclaimer- I sell a mouthpiece cleaner)
I have no proof by experimentation but personally I would be afraid of eventually breaking the cross-linked bonds in vulcanized rubber with repeated ultrasonic treatments. Ultrasonic cleaners come in various wattage ratings and some of the smaller versions may not supply enough energy to rattle the bonds into breaking but some may.
The bonds themselves, catalyzed by sulphur and other more modern catalysts, are really not that strong chemically as evidenced by the eventual destabilization of vulcanized rubber by the bonds just breaking with aging - UV and oxygen also cause accelerated bond breakage at the surface. Depending on the bonding patterns certain rubbers are more stable than others but at any given time just a snap shot of the current situation and not when the rubber was first made because of the continuous process of bond breaking.
L. Omar Henderson
www.doctorsprod.com
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Author: 53engine
Date: 2008-03-11 22:22
I think that the ultrasonic cleaning sounds like a novel and good idea. The greening that hard rubber mouthpieces acquire after years of storage and the accompanying bad taste are examples of oxidation of the sulfur crosslinking bonds probably catalyzed by uv/visible light. But this takes years.
Personally, I prefer the old toothbrush/toothpaste followed by vinegar dip and rinsing. But I would be interested to hear any followup to this idea by someone who actually uses the ultrasonic treatment. Sixty seconds, or so, in the ultrasonic bath followed by a soft towel drying aren't going to degrade a hard rubber surface.
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Author: Simon Aldrich
Date: 2008-03-11 22:52
AS said, "I don't quite believe that silk swab could wear out mouthpiece"
A few weeks ago I was giving a lesson to a prospective student and at the end of the lesson I saw him dragging his silk swab through the mouthpiece.
I suggested he not do that since there is evidence that repeated swabbing of the mouthpiece wears down (thins) the tip rail.
We had a look at his mouthpiece and the tip rail was wafer thin.
It was a Greg Smith mouthpiece and the tip rail was a fraction the thickness it usually is. There is no way Greg made the tip that thin. We are talking a quarter of a mm.
If repeated swabbing wears down an external part of the mouthpiece, I wonder what it does to an internal part which is enduring much greater friction from the swab.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Simon Aldrich
Clarinet Faculty - McGill University
Principal Clarinet - Orchestre Metropolitain de Montreal
Artistic Director - London Chamber Music Festival
Clarinet - Nouvel Ensemble Moderne
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Author: L. Omar Henderson
Date: 2008-03-12 00:50
(Disclaimer as before)
Had to go back to the lab tonight to check on some experiments so I dug up the manual for the sonicator and our commercial grade ultra-sonic machine has a warning in the instruction book not to pulse rubber or hard plastic parts because stress fractures may occur. I will have to look through the infamous mouthpiece drawer tomorrow for a loser and sonicate it for an hour or so and see what happens - it may give me great pleasure to see it disintegrate !!
L. Omar Henderson
www.doctorsprod.com
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Author: tictactux ★2017
Date: 2008-03-12 01:09
The glass thingies of that chandelier we "did" in the ultrasonic - after a minute we saw that some of the <cough> crystals looked as if they had been in a riverbed for five years - not dull, but they definitely looked like sanded down on certain corners.
After all, those 60-odd watts have to go somewhere...
--
Ben
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2008-03-12 01:22
I’ve used my silk swab on my mouthpiece for years. The mouthpiece is about 20 years old and there’s no noticeable difference. When you pull it through do not pull it against the rails, pull it the other way. The other thing you can do if that bothers you is to push it in and out with your hand so it doesn’t “pull” through. As far as cleaning it, warm soap and water is fine and soaking it in vinegar and water once in a while for a few minutes then scraping off the calcium build up with you finger nails, gently, works great.
Check my article in the last Clarinet journal about that. ESP
www.peabody.jhu.edu/457
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2008-03-12 01:40
tictactux wrote:
> After all, those 60-odd watts have to go somewhere...
Cavitation can do amazing things to even very hard and/or tough materials ...
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Author: C2thew
Date: 2008-03-12 06:31
i'd like to hear more about omar's test on sacrificing a beater mouthpiece to the ultrasonic cleaner. my friend has one of those and uses it exclusively for yes: oboe and bassoon reeds. It also cleans eyeglasses fairly well too.
Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. they are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which was already but too easy to arrive as railroads lead to Boston to New York
-Walden; Henry Thoreau
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Author: AS
Date: 2008-03-12 07:28
We are lucky to have Mr. Henderson with us on board who is willing to spend his time and mouthpieces just to test our crazy ideas! Thanks! Looking forward to read about the results. Maybe the mouthpiece under ultrasonics will transform into a bell?
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Author: Mike Clarinet
Date: 2008-03-12 08:49
Ultrasonic cleaning has been used in the electronics manufacturing industry for years to clean printed circuit boards. Residual flux and solder left on a board can affect the performance of sensitive measuring devices or high frequency devices such as radios, TVs and mobile phones. They work by immersing the board in a bath of solvent (exactly what solvent depends on what flux is used - a number were banned in Europe a few years ago and now there are a number of water-soluble fluxes around) and the ultrasonic process creates bubbles in the solvent which scrub the board clean. It is a combination of chemical (solvent) and mechanical (scrubbing) processes.
Good luck to the Doctor's tests!!
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Author: clarnibass
Date: 2008-03-12 08:49
"swabbing a mouthpiece is regarded by many as a demonstration of brutality against the mouthpiece."
My mouthpiece likes it....
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2008-03-12 09:19
"Cavitation can do amazing things to even very hard and/or tough materials ..."
Ultrasonic cleaners are sometimes tested by the way that in seconds, they punch a myriad of holes through aluminium foil.
So my bet is on them being able to break up unstable bonds in hard rubber.
I personally wonder what they do to the poorly attached zinc in brass.
The very hard whitish mineral deposits that accumulate on some players' mouthpieces is pretty firmly attached to the mouthpiece. Why use the microscopic sledgehammers (i.e. the collapse of cavitation that an ultrasonic cleaner uses) when vinegar dissolves it so easily.
Then a carefully used bottle brush and a little soap or detergent gets rid of any other crud.
Re the abrasive activity of the silk swab on the front rail. I wonder it teeth had anything to do with it. I cannot imagine much swab pressure on that front rail.. So how about a little check on that mouthpiece... By far the most abrasion would occur at the tenon end of the bore, when the swab enters the mouthpiece. Was that conspicuously rounded?
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Author: L. Omar Henderson
Date: 2008-03-12 17:00
(Disclaimer- I sell a mouthpiece cleaner)
Well, one hour at 50 degrees C, high setting, in a Barstead 1.75L 500 Watt ultrasonic bath with distilled water and an older Selmer HS* mouthpiece that always played sharp produced visible micro-cracks and under magnification a bunch more cracks and rounding of the knife edges of the rails. Bits of tenon cork were ripped away but whatever mineral deposits present were gone so it definitely removes mineral deposits!!! This is not to say that a lower wattage for a shorter period and cooler temperature might not work to remove deposits too but this was an accelerated testing which may be indicitive of cumulative effects. Darn, it did not disintegrate before my eyes however which would have been very sweet but it did get 2 points for a hook shot into the trash can after the test.
L. Omar Henderson
www.doctorsprod.com
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Author: 53engine
Date: 2008-03-12 17:35
Omar,
You're loading the dice. Nobody suggested 1 hour at 500 watts and 50 deg. F.
Why not do some real science? Create a designed experiment with time, temp. and wattage as independent variables and an inspection assessment, graded-1-5-for the dependent variablesof number of cracks, amount of residue removal and rounding of the rails. If you don't kmnow how to set up the experiments, I can do it for you.
The whole thing should take less than 2 hours. Rather than a real analysis, I bet just sorting the data will give us the answer. Why not make the data available for all of us? It will be a nice change from reading about whether this guy likes #5 Rue 56 reeds on a Kaspar mouthpiece and Leblanc Opus or whatever.
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Author: L. Omar Henderson
Date: 2008-03-12 18:09
Of course I am loading the dice. I know how to design experiments with several variables. Who would like to contribute 4 quality hard rubber mouthpieces for the experiment? Would not each mouthpiece be a new variable? All of this gets pretty expensive for a test that in any case will show some destruction to a mouthpiece which is exactly what you would want to avoid - Right?
L. Omar Henderson'
www.doctorsprod.com
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Author: 53engine
Date: 2008-03-12 18:48
Omar,
First of all, when did the idea of quality hard rubber as a variable get introduced? In any event, the difference in the rubber would be insignificant relative to the changes in each independent variable. You know that as well as I do.
Secondly, the discussion was about exposing the mouthpiece to ultrasound for 60 seconds, not 60 minutes. For those who are unscientific, this would be like betting someone that a suntan product protected from the sun for up to 30 minutes and then having the guy staying in the sun for many hours and saying that the suntan product didn't work.
Generally, we do experiments to acquire knowledge so we set up our experiements to be as free from bias as possible. But if you want to prove that ultrasonic waves will adversely change the surface of a h.r mouthpiece, then exposing it for 60 minutes would be a good start.
We don't know the following:
--that the minimum time to remove the caked material is enough to injure the surface of the mouthpiece.
-- that the effect is cumulative, or
--that the differences in rubber mouthpieces would be a factor.
These are all things that we haven't yet learned.
Aren't they?
You know what they say, if you hve 2 PhD's then you need three theories. One guy's theory for the other guy to dismiss and one for the second guy to dismiss and then one for both of then to agree to dismiss.
Put the thing in vinegar, rinse and dry with a soft towel, best way known to do it.
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Author: Ryan25
Date: 2008-03-12 20:41
Just pull a silk swab through the thing after you play from the tennon towards the facing......the rails will be fine. I'm sure the rails take more abuse with a wet, vibrating reed clamped down on them for hours a day then a little piece of silk.
It's just a mouthpiece for crying out loud. We are not using $100,000 torte bows or something. Lets all get a grip.
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Author: davidsampson
Date: 2008-03-12 21:11
Forgive me if I am wrong, but Mr. Henderson is simply trying to see if it is possible that an ultrasonic cleaner could damage a mouthpiece. If this is the case, then his experiment would be a baseline for determining if that is true. IF 60 minutes in a high wattage ultrasonic cleaner cannot damage the mouthpiece, then its highly unlikely that a low wattage cleaner for 60 seconds could do the job. It won't prove that a small ultrasonic cleaner running for the recommended amount of time can damage a mouthpiece, it does prove that ultrasonic cleaning can cause damage, in some degree. A better analogy would be doing weight testing on a bridge with much more weight than is recommended or practical. That insures that the bridge could withstand normal usage, and has a lower margin of error than testing with slightly more than the minimum amount of weight, which might only break the bridge in very specific conditions.
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Author: L. Omar Henderson
Date: 2008-03-12 21:22
Well, if you want to test each variable - wattage, time, and temperature you will need a new hard rubber mouthpiece for each. I would also emphasize new because one would not know how much bond breakage had already taken place in a group of older mouthpieces unless they came from the same lot and were treated with the same environmental conditions up to the time of testing.
Of course one could go to the trouble of mapping bonding patterns in the rubber - which I have done on occasion - before and after a set of treatments but this is a destructive technique and would call for a few more identical mouthpieces for the trial. There are significant differences in bonding patterns between mouthpieces and even lots of mouthpieces and also if the mouthpiece is molded and then vulcanized or milled from vulcanized hard rubber stock. I do know a lot about these factors from consulting work that I have done for an unnamed mouthpiece manufacturer who wanted to know the bonding patterns and other factors about old Chedeville mouthpieces, modern Chedeville recreations, and molded mouthpieces.
My assumption, which is based on empirical evidence, is that bonds are formed at the time of vulcanization and then break with age and various environmental conditions and energy insults like sonication. Therefore, the bond breaking is not reversible and the effects of bond breakage become cumulative. Failure or cracks are a function of the number of bonds broken and the original bonding pattern.
The results of my experiment only show that a 40 year old Selmer HS* mouthpiece will show micro cracking and sharp edge deformation if exposed to moderate heat and ultrasonic energy from a 500W sonicator for one hour.
This is indeed the makings of a hypothesis that ultrasonic energy causes bond breaking leading to failure and cracking in hard rubber mouthpieces, especially with increased temperature and I will leave it to others to test the hypothesis and prove it right or wrong. At least I get my name on the hypothesis!
I am recently in the mouthpiece making business, not finishing them but making blanks from proprietary rubber, but this is not my only business and this hypothesis holds little interest to the myriad of other projects under way so doing the correct and proper experiment - even though I know how - is not at the top of my list for time management. In order to do it correctly would also be costly.
L. Omar Henderson
www.doctorsprod.com
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Author: 53engine
Date: 2008-03-12 21:42
Sounds like interesting work. Thanks for sharing it with us.
I just wanted to expose the board to something other than the same old stuff about how many Vandoren reeds in the blue box are stronger than the ones in the gray box if you have a Hungarian clarinet player, whose father wore French underwear bottoms and German tops. And the guy ties his reeds onto his selmervandorenyamahawells mouthpiece with bronzed string from his first kid's baby shoes but he is comparing it to silvered string from the last kid's silvered baby shoes.
It gets kind of tedious.
I was having a little fun.
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Author: timg
Date: 2008-03-12 22:54
I think 53engine's criticism is rather overstated.
Every experiment, everything we do, has a billion uncontrolled variables. A good scientist only applies the slow grinding logic of science when it is interesting and necessary. It would be possible to spend months studying ultrasound-induced damage to clarinet mouthpieces., but maybe Omar feels this is not interesting or necessary -- and I'd agree with him.
Without using the rules of science at all, Omar has shown that ultrasonic cleaners can cause damage -- and that's probably all that most people want to know.
-Tim
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Author: jim lande
Date: 2016-10-22 18:09
The original post posited 5 to 10 minutes of cleaning from time to time as a substitute for daily swabbing of a mouthpiece. Imagine once a week cleaning for several years. Omar's test convinces me that it would degrade the mouthpiece and probably shorten the age. I'm thinking about getting an ultrasonic cleaner for other reasons and I won't be putting mouthpieces in. I Omar's responses, however, also provided a lot of interesting information about hard rubber so I'm glad there was some prodding on experimental design.
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