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Re: Oxidised hard rubber

Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2006-08-14 12:47

Vytas wrote:
"Bleach should not be used on any hard-rubber clarinet or mouthpiece. Bleach removes substantial amount of material altering the size of the bore and the facing (on mouthpieces)."

Vytas, I have used dilute bleach only a few times, mostly with my own old mouthpieces, after reading about this treatment in a forum.

I did not notice any difference to the dimensions. If bleach attacked hard rubber to that degree I think I would have noticed rounding of the edges of the rails.

However your claim intrigued me, so I did a couple of experiments:

I measured the bore at the open end of an old, green, hard rubber mouthpiece, and left it soaking in "FULL STRENGTH" household bleach (actually only 3% sodium hypochlorite), for 40 minutes. I left the last 15 mm at the tip untreated, so that any alteration to the submerged part of the rails would hopefully be more visible. Then I scrubbed it well, and dried it.

The submerged part of the mouthpiece turned black. Under a 12x magnifier, I could see no change to the surface of the rails, nor the edges. I could find no measurable change in the bore where I had measured it.

Go figure. Perhaps different formulations of hard rubber behave differently. Perhaps the surface of the mouthpiece will vanish overnight.

Vytas wrote,
"Bleach has instant chemical reaction with blued springs and will destroy them even faster than it turns the hard-rubber back to black."

So for my next experiment

Next, for a really strong solution, to accelerate any reaction, I scraped about 2 cc of powder from a sodium hypochlorite tablet designed for swimming pool use, and mixed this with about a 20 ml of water. The solution was a pale yellow/green, indicating a high chlorine content. I solvent cleaned the outside of a blued steel needle spring, and soaked it in the powerful solution for 15 minutes, periodically stirring.

The diameter of the spring both before and after the treatment was 0.71 mm. The blued appearance was unchanged.

I acknowledge that my experiments are not definitive. If an entire clarinet body, including posts and springs, were submerged in bleach, there may be other chemical reactions between the different materials involved. An example would be galvanic action between the dissimilar metals of the springs and the posts, although their electrode potential is fairly similar, indicating little activity.

So I do wonder about the severity of the claims made. I would be interested in a report of the details of your own experiments.

"A mouthpiece re-facer might find soaking an affected mouthpiece in dilute bleach useful just before the work on facing and chamber is actually performed but I personally use faster and more effective ways to deal with this issue. "

I look forward to hearing about your own, more effective method.

Post Edited (2014-06-01 09:34)

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Oxidized hard rubber new

EuGeneSee

2006-08-12 19:58