 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: m1964
Date: 2025-11-17 07:32
Hello,
I hope someone will help me out with this:
A friend asked to check his plastic Buffet Prodigy because the clarinet feels very resistant.
I checked and felt it was leaking, so took it home, plugged all the holes and it still was leaking.
Tested in a glass of water and found the thumb tube leaking.
Does the thumb tube need to be removed and re-sealed?
Or, can I just put a bead of superglue around the tube?
If needs to be removed, what is used to reseal it? Wax?
I am very hesitant to even slightly heat that tube.
Thanks
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Author: clarnibass
Date: 2025-11-17 09:22
In theory the crack might have some greasy dirt that would prevent the glue from sticking, so ideally you'd want to remove it and then glue it. In practice just putting liquid super glue around the rim works fine 99% of the times and what I would do. You can wick a thin liquid cleaner (e.g. lighter fluid) in there but then you really want to make sure you remove it (with air pressure and time) before gluing it. It's usually so thin that it can take some time until it really evaporates and is completely gone.
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2025-11-17 17:23
If the thumb tube is threaded and has a rubber O ring to seal it, then it could be leaking if it's not tightened up. If it's not got an O ring, then it can be sealed with cork grease which is better with plastic clarinets as there's no risk of melting anything.
On wooden clarinets with threaded thumb (and speaker) tubes, heat them and install them with beeswax or paraffin wax to seal them.
All push fit ones should be glued in - contact adhesive on plastic clarinets and shellac on wooden clarinets.
In all cases, anything fitted to clarinet bodies should still be removable when they need to be instead of being made a permanent fix.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
Independent Woodwind Repairer
Single and Double Reed Specialist
Oboes, Clarinets and Saxes
NOT A MEMBER OF N.A.M.I.R.
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: m1964
Date: 2025-11-17 23:23
Clarnibass and Chris P.,
Thanks a lot for replying to me.
It is a screw-in type, not push-in type like on R13s.
I got it out, cleaned threads on both the tube and the body and sealed with La Thromba cork/slide grease.
Once I looked inside carefully, it became clear that it was not a push-in type because the tube did not have the oval-shaped cut-out like R13 tubes have.
Again, thanks a lot for your help.
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