Orange Peels Revive Wood Clarinets?

Gandalfe

Gandalfe

Striving to play the changes in a melodic way.
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If it would deodorize wood wouldn't it stand to reason that it might help with stinky pads? It would not work well with silver horns and I believe it would encourage tarnish on bare brass horns.
 
the orange peel is used as a humidifier .. and a nice smelling one at that. It increases the humidity of the air in the case and allows the clarinet to humidfy via the orange peel.
personally, i've never used this method.

depending upon where you live and the temperature, humidity, etc would all vary to know if you should oil your clarinet.

One of the first identifiers I use is looking inside the socket of the barrel on the mpc side. If this is dry then I'll oil the socket. The oiling of the clarinet is used to prevent it from absorbing water/moisture. Thus using a humidifier I believe goes against the reason to oil .. oil prevents water/moisture to be absorbed into the wood and himidifying adds water to the clarinet. Thus the reason I believe that oiling a clarinet from time to time has positive effects
 
Well, all I'm hinting is that while oranges have a high water content, they might have a high content of other stuff you don't want. Hey, there are cautions about not putting an orange peel inside the clarinet, just havening it inside the case.

However, lotsa furniture polish has citrus scents ....
 
I'm not sure if the orange peel would tarnish the silver keys. But that worries me so I probably won't be testing the theory on my instruments.
 
I'm not a chemist although I have a good friend who is one so I may be wrong about the orange peel. I'm not volunteering any of my horns for the experiment. :emoji_relaxed:
 
Oranges contain volatile oils. Eventually those are going to get on pads and gum things up, but I don't know how long it would take. If you need to humidify anything, water is best.

Toby
 
I received a POS Pedler today. It came with an extra barrel. One of the rings is loose, so tomorrow I'll stick it in a ziploc with some peels.
Hopefully, it will work like it has for others.
 
UPDATE - I forgot all about the barrel in the orange peels. Good news is it worked great! Prior to bagging
it up with the peels, the ring would fall right off. Now they are both very snug as if they were glued on.

Bad news is, 46 year olds with too many things on their mind should not attempt this.
I now have a great starter kit if I ever want to develop my own vitamin C enhanced pennicillin.
Take a look at this .
 
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oranges

hey, did I get this wrong? I put a whole orange in my case, plus some sandwiches and snack bar, now i get lunch whenever i play!

will it make my 2-20 play in tune again?

sorry, being a bit silly, which for a 54 year old I should know better!!

How are the rings normally fixed on , is it a push fit or glue? Cos I would like to reverse engineer and take a couple off to clean a little more vigorously.??
 
cromerblues said:
How are the rings normally fixed on , is it a push fit or glue? Cos I would like to reverse engineer and take a couple off to clean a little more vigorously.??
Click to expand...
Push fit which means they can come loose in cold weather. So maybe that's an easy way to remove them? Note, I'm not a tech, nor do I play one on TV.
 
rings are normally pressure fit.
some of them have those oneway teeth and are more problematic to take off

if they are tight the easiest way to take them off is to have them affixed on something like a lathe, in which you could then lightly "knock" them off little by little.

if you need to polish them then follow the instructions I have for home polishing .. works great.
 
Don't worry about tarnish

The only reason anything would tarnish silver keys would be if it had volatile sulfur compounds in it. Orange peels don't, to the best of my knowledge.

OTOH, you definitely shouldn't put an onion or broccoli in your clarinet case!
 
I tried this once, and given the fact that a) I don't like citrus, and b) the barrel developed a crack on the 2nd day, I wouldn't try it again.
I wonder if the climate has anything to do with how well the orange peel humidifies the wood?
You'd think, in cold weather when the heater dries things out, that it would work like a charm.
But in humid Florida, I can make a wide eyed guess that it's just too much moisture on top of moisture that could have been the culprit for the (so I thought) orange peel induced crack?
Thus my hypothesis would be that this technique is only for those who desperately need to condition their instrument with moisture.
My clarinets like oil here.
 
My shop actually has a humidifier - a hot mist one which I use quite often. It's amazing in the winter, with already the air being dry, how much a gas furnace takes all the moisture out of the air.

If I don't run it from time to time my hands will actually dry out and crack. After a while of running it my hands go back to normal. Luckily the clarinets are not as sensitive as my hands.
 
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