Magic mainstock ??

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PJ
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Magic mainstock ??

Post by PJ »

A friend left a half set with me to get it playing again. The pipes had been left in an unheated garage for several years. Other than the dried out leather of the bag and bellows, the main issue was that the solid mainstock had developed two large cracks which 3" from the tenor and baritone drone stocks (holes in the mainstock where the drones sit) back toward the bag. Also, the mainstock ferrule over the "outboard" end of the stock was very loose.

I got the chanter playing, but the cracks in the mainstock made it impossible to for the drones to play. While trying to decide between giving up or ordering a new mainstock, I put the pipes into a box and into a bedroom wardrobe. That was over a year ago.

Yesterday. at the end of a relatively humid summer, I took out the pipes and was surprised to see that the cracks had closed up entirely (can't even see where they were) and the mainstock ferrule was on tight.

The mainstock seems to be made of dense blackwood, like the drones (certainly not cherry, which most other stocks I've seen are made from).

I've seen wooden flutes crack over the tuning slide in dry Quebec winters, but I've never seen a mainstock do this. Has anyone had a similar experience with a mainstock cracking and then closing?
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Re: Magic mainstock ??

Post by Nanohedron »

PJ wrote:Has anyone had a similar experience with a mainstock cracking and then closing?
Not mainstocks, but judging by what I've seen elsewhere, you can expect it to open up again when things dry out. A friend has a blackwood flute with a cracked head - it's still perfectly playable, no problem - but come the humid weather the crack closes up as if it had never been there, and come the dry, it opens right up again. Because its playability is unaffected, he's seen fit not to mess with the wood's natural cycle. The implications for a mainstock, though, are of course quite different. Does it work as intended when the crack's closed?
"If you take music out of this world, you will have nothing but a ball of fire." - Tribal musician
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