This Time of the Year - Part 3

Seriously, I can't believe this is my third year in a row of having to deal with a crack problem in my clarinet. This time, there were TWO cracks to deal with!

Here's a photo of what I found at 10pm the night before I was to travel to Greensboro and Winston-Salem to play our British music recitals. What got me looking at my clarinet was that two "normal" reeds that I tried on my clarinet were registering 15-20 cents flat on the tuner. That seemed odd, so I checked to see if the crack we had superglued last month had opened up again. The superglued area was fine, but the crack had lengthened into the second tone hole, and a new crack had developed at the bottom of that same tone hole.

I'm lucky that Eldred Spell is a night owl and that my husband just happened to have a fairly new bottle of ultra thin superglue at home. This kind of superglue often dries up in the bottle before you need it a second time. Eldred did a lovely job of sealing the cracks and polishing the bore so that the superglue mostly disappeared from view, and I was able to start playing through my recital program by midnight.

Since it was raining like crazy that week, and the humidity in my house was decent, I am sure that this occurred because of the lack of humidity where I work: WCU's Coulter Building. I may have to start using my second best clarinet during students' lessons, if I want to save my clarinet from completely breaking apart!

This Time of the Year - Part 2

I discovered a crack in my clarinet this week. That makes four Bb clarinets in a row for me. Three of which were probably brought on by the horrible conditions of the non humidity controlled building in which I work. That and scheduling recitals in February. Since it's been two and a half years since I got this clarinet, I thought it was "seasoned" enough to not crack, but I was wrong.

I thought of repairing the crack myself, but then I got wise and did what any intelligent person within driving distance of Eldred Spell would do: I packed up my clarinet and a bottle of ultra thin super glue and headed for Eldred's house. Eldred is the master of fixing such things, and these photos prove it. It was both interesting and disheartening to see the extent of the crack through a microscope.

Diagnosis

Operation

Recovery