loose rings

I have been hearing from better musicians than I that the quality of the Buffet instruments have gone down since they were bought out. Apparently they have unskilled labor doing the work now. I wonder about this as I hear about the rings on your barrel. It really sounds like you are going to have to have the rings resized which is a shame.

It also means those of us with pre-sellout Buffet R-13's, like my Festival, have instruments that will retain their value.
 
I'm thinking I'll be using some parchment after I get the excess oil wiped off this weekend.

I looked at the barrel this Buffet is replacing, and it also has paper under the upper ring. It is a very nice barrel (SML) that plays wonderfully on my Buffet A clarinet, but is a touch short on the SML clarinet.
 
Loose rings are a common problem on the best clarinets, especially in a dry climate. Here in Florida, we have the opposite problem - male tenon joints that swell so much that they won't go together all the way. I had to get special tools from Buffet to adjust the shoulders of clarinet tenons. Well, I didn't have to get the tools, there are other ways to solve the problem, but the Buffet tools make it quick and accurate.

There are lots of good suggestions here for loose rings. Most of them seem to be good ideas, and I learned some new ones - thanks.
 
72 hours

No change, oily inside, partially dry outside, the rings are still just as loose as ever.
 
jbtsax said:
It should be noted that having loose rings on a clarinet does not encourage the wood to crack. If it is going to crack, the wood will crack whether or not the rings are tight. The purpose of the rings are to protect the ends of the joints and to be decorative.
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Hi John!

I'm sure the method you described is good.I only prefer the method with shellac because it puts the exact correct amount of filler all around, as opposed to the same thickness of filler (which might actually not put the same pressure all around). I'm really not sure this is significant, but I still go with the shellac method.

Re what I quoted above from your post, it's interesting since I heard the opposite from several repairers. Some say a clarinet will very rarely crack if there is a tight ring. Since cracks many times don't go all the way into the bore, I'm wondering if the lower part (bore end) of the crack even moves at all. So mayeb the ring helps, but doesn't prevent, the wood cracking exactly below it, which is a higher wood part of the body. But maybe it prevents cracks in the part it is covering in the socket, or the crack getting all the way into the bore next the ring.

I consider that the rings definitely helps against cracking. Esthetics is a much less important reason. They do protect the end of the bodies, but many times on the same clarinets there is nothing to protect the end of tenon, a much thinner and more sensitive place.

Gandalfe said:
It really sounds like you are going to have to have the rings resized which is a shame.
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He will not have to have the rings resized. There are several methods mentioned in this thread that I consider much better than resizing the rings.

Groovekiller said:
I had to get special tools from Buffet to adjust the shoulders of clarinet tenons. Well, I didn't have to get the tools, there are other ways to solve the problem, but the Buffet tools make it quick and accurate.
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Can you explain a bit more about these tools? How do they work, cost, etc? I just recently heard about a method to do this repair which I didn't think about before, and I'm looking more into it, but I never heard of these Buffet tools.

Thanks.
 
I believe that the large number of barrels observed by repair techs that have cracked while having tight rings in place would dispel the notion that rings prevent the wood from cracking. If this is indeed the case as I believe it is, putting equal pressure under the ring with shellac is a moot point.

John
 
I'm not a repair guy, but I'd think that based on the number of barrels I've seen that don't have rings, I'd go with purely decorative.

You might be able to make the argument that if the horn doesn't have enough moisture, the rings will become loose that the rings are there to alert you of that fact. That sounds like a good reason. A bit of overkill, I'd say, but it's logical.

FWIW, one would think that the presence of the rings (JRR Tolkien flashback; Gandalfe must post more in this thread) could actually be a bad thing: if the horn swells from moisture, the rings can't expand and contract as easily as wood and thus a crack will result.
 
I can't post more. With over 10, I really should count them sometime, sopranino and sop clarinets (remember Suzy uses half of them) I've never experienced this problem. Both us have lived in various parts of the world. Of course I'm not saying this doesn't happen. It just has never happened to us.
Gandalf: They are one; the ring and the Dark Lord. Frodo, he must never find it.
Frodo: [gets up to hide the ring] All right. We'll put it away. We'll keep it hidden, we'll never speak of it again. No one knows it's here, do they?
[Gandalf doesn't answer]
Frodo: Do they, Gandalf?
​
 
jbtsax said:
I believe that the large number of barrels observed by repair techs that have cracked while having tight rings in place would dispel the notion that rings prevent the wood from cracking. If this is indeed the case as I believe it is, putting equal pressure under the ring with shellac is a moot point.
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Good point, but actually very few of the cracked barrels I've seen (with tight rings) had the crack all the way to the end, under the rings, or all the way into the bore (I think I only remember one of each). Also, by far most cracked barrels I've seen had at least one loose ring (sometimes both) when the crack closed. Usually (i.e. almost always) the crack is actually from ring to ring, and not deeper than the half the body thickness (i.e. above the wood scoket part). I think it's possible that tight ring help against cracks getting deeper and into the ends under the rings.

But from your reply I see I wasn't clear. I didn't mean euqal pressure (actually support) with shellac because of this at all. The reason I prefer the equal support of shellac is that it doesn't put too much pressure on the wood or the ring. Another method where you can't really control the amount of pressure will possibly have the ring too tight.
 
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No change as of last night when I wiped off the excess oil. The top ring will get the parchment treatment as it is still fall of on its own loose. The bottom ring isn't, and never was, as loose as the upper. I think I'll use hide glue for it since I am familiar with it.
 
Well that was embarrassing.
I went to rehearsal last night. Guess what I left home on the bench.:emoji_rolling_eyes:

(All 3 barrels)
 
I'll add that I used other instruments till Tuesdays rehearsal to let the oil just soak up as thoroughly as possible.

No change at all in the rings being loose.

How could they have left the factory this loose? I see it in Selmer barrels too. Is the company that makes STM ligs for Babbit now making clarinet rings and fitting them?
 
It's likely that the rings were tight when they left the factory and are now loose because of different tempeture and humidity. You should just make them tight by one of the possible methods (as I mentioned, my preferred method is gluing them with shellac).
 
Boy do I feel like an idiot. I just use a little Elmers Glue-All. :oops:
It's more 'elastic' and seems to shrink and swell with the wood.
 
Tammi said:
Boy do I feel like an idiot. I just use a little Elmers Glue-All. :oops:
It's more 'elastic' and seems to shrink and swell with the wood.
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Same here. Except that I stopped feeling like an idiot. :cool:
 
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