Why do clarinets crack

Look closely, a crack can be thin as a hair, or may resemble the wood grain. Anything that looks at all suspicious should be checked out by a qualified repair technician. The following are the steps I take to avoid cracking. Being a natural substance, if wood wants to crack , it eventually will, no matter how careful you are.

You could be doing everything right, but something as simple as someone opening a door and a cool breeze coming through could cause a crack.

Menu Skip to content. If you notice a crack on your clarinet which are commonly on the upper joint around the tone holes , avoid playing your clarinet until you can take it to a qualified repair technician to fix. A cracked clarinet is not necessarily a death sentence for your beloved instrument, and repair techs will assess each clarinet to determine the best way to repair your clarinet.

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I read a lot about pinning and the like but haven't seen this operation in real life yet. In conjunction with the proper adhesive nearly any crack can be permanently and reliably repaired thusly. Author: Chris P Date: My oboe teacher's Marigaux split from top to bottom just below the level of the trill beam when she was still living in Minnesota, missing all the toneholes on the top joint - fortunately most toneholes are inline, only the trills and 3rd 8ve toneholes are offset but they were out of danger.

It looks as if it's been caught up in machine gun fire with all the filled holes. Stranger than fiction this, I've just had a call to repair a cracked R13 top joint for someone living in Japan, it cracked while here in the UK and it also needs the trill toneholes bushed as well as the crack has run through both of them I'll bush them in ebonite, though I do like using PVC bushes as they cut nice and cleanly when recutting the new bedplace - ebonite can be a bit grainy depending on how hot it gets when cutting.

The bit that I'll add is that you need to consider the overall value of the instrument when deciding not only how to repair it, but whether it's worth being repaired. If it's a resin intro-level student model, I'd be inclined to have a tech glue it as a temporary fix, keeping in mind that it's going to need to be replaced sooner or later. That's not necessarily a bad thing, since the owner will eventually want to upgrade. If it's a better instrument I'd arbitrarily say the equivalent of a Buffet E11, or better , and the crack isn't disastrous, having it pinned is probably a reasonable thing to do.

While I'm relatively new to clarinet repair, I'm not new to woods. A split into the bore that opens a side of a tone hole is fairly major. I agree with one posting about cracks going into holes On the other hand, if that crack is widening as the instrument is played, pretty substantial repairs are in order. Emerging cracks not going through to the bore can be stabilized with threaded pins, as Dave S. In some other wood applications, such cracks are often considered "checking, " and aren't necessarily a big deal, but in a wooden clarinet I'd pin them to hold them at bay, and probably do a cosmetic fill of the fissure.

The one comment that I find puzzling is the tech who wanted a crack opened as wide as possible to fill it. I have a different opinion. Spreading a crack wider and filling it keeps constant circumferencial sp? I'd want to have it as close to closed as possible, pinning the wood to hold it in that position. That's so I could add a filler that would give some additional support, but which would be mainly cosmetic.

Author: Fred Date: For me, it would also be an issue of the intrinsic value of the clarinet. If it were one of the best clarinets I'd ever played, I'd probably lean toward pinning even if it devalued the clarinet in the marketplace.

Author: Chris P Date: I've never flush banded a crack, nor would I ever be inclined to - I don't know how many old Selmers I've seen on eBay for sale, only to see they've been flush banded on closer inspection - and the flush bands go right across the top joint logo. I know that aspect can't be helped when repairing with flush bands, but it looks bloody ugly. As for looks, Dave S. The folks who do that well produce a repair that most people would never detect.

Author: Chris P Date: On the pins themselves, I measure the depth of the hole with a needle spring and put a file cut in the pin at this point, once the pin is screwed in as far as the file cut I snap it off, leaving the snapped end below the surface. Then I mill out a hollow between 4 or 5mm dia to a depth of mm into the body where the pins went in, taking the ends of the pins down a bit as well and filling it flush with the body with wood dust and thin superglue, then filing the excess down, papering it all smooth and polishing it to finish so the repair is pretty much hidden - only under strong light can the fillings be seen.

Author: Chris P Date: Right, now I've got a challenge on my hands - I've just had this cracked R13 delivered to me to repair, but the crack has completely closed up and I can't for the life of me see where it was!

Without knowing where or how far the crack runs down the top joint I can't really do anything until it opens up again - so I'll just have to sit and wait for that to happen - but I suppose the best thing to do is when it does open, mark it with a pencil and then let it close up again by putting it in a sealed bag with a damp cloth, then pin it once it's closed.

I can bush the trill toneholes later on, but apart from the usual chips in these toneholes that are normal on most clarinets, they're almost perfect. I was told the crack was pretty wide - not anymore! Author: clarnibass Date: Chris I've had a lot of cracks because the crazy weather we have here and you really have to play the clarinet for the crack to open.

Author: Chris P Date: I can't play this clarinet now as all the top joint keys are off, as well as the speaker bush and trill guide. But I put a damp rag in the bore to let it open up again, then I'll mark the crack before letting it close up so I can see where I'm to pin it. I'm surprised, though, that you can't spot the crack with a good magnifying glass and a strong light shone upon the wood at an angle. Sometimes you don't see the crack itself, at first, but just notice that the grain doesn't look quite right along one line.

Author: Chris P Date: The grain is a bit wavy towards the top tenon just above the top trill tonehole, so I reckon the crack follows a wavy line. But still the crack hasn't made itself shown at all, even under strong light. There's several surface vessels that look like they could be cracks but these aren't in the place where the crack is reported to be.

Plus the fact it has the wire brush finish to the wood that Buffet seem to like using rather than a completely smooth polished finish, which would make any crack more obvious as the surface finish would be broken following the line of the crack. So what I've done now is plugged up all the toneholes and the top end of the bore, turned the joint upside down and filled it with warm water - if that won't make it open up, then I don't know what will!