Some you may have been following the ‘humidity’ thread over on the flute board. Or not.
I was just wondering… how ‘common’ is cracking in UPs, particularly around joints where the wood is wrapped around metal?
You see, physics tells me that in wooden flutes fitted with metal liners (tuning slides) then increases and decreases in temperature (caused by the player’s breath, or lack thereof) are the likeliest cause of cracks in headjoints and barrels.
But the UPs are powered by bellows, and room-temperature air. So there won’t be any thermally-induced expansion/contraction of metal liners to cause the wood to split. Nor any moisture from breath to create condensation and oblige the practice of oiling bores.
Winter time is quite hard (-20 c some days ago) here in Finland for wooden instruments(esp. tuning), ferrules from the block allways looses when the wooden part is shrinking, same thing with ferrule bottom of the chanter and drone parts.In summer they are tight. But even this exist allmost every year
no cracks on wood (blackwood) . I’m try to keep pipes place where temperature and humidity would be same level all the time. when not playing. Perhaps my pipes wood’s structure has somekind "memory and it’s oriented
for climatechanges here, who knows…
cheers,
Mikko
Gary, I think you nailed it when you mentioned that UPs are bellows driven, thus removing excessive moisture as a possible culprit. To the best of my knowledge (which isn’t very expansive) there aren’t any bores in UPs that are metal.
But, any wooden instrument runs the risk of cracking when exposed to extremes of temperature and climate. To date, I am unaware of any problem with UPs in this regard, but that’s not to say it doesn’t happen.
It seemed to me that at the bottom of the chanter, and at the top where the airpipe goes in, that the metal tubes would actually be lining the wood for a short distance (like a tuning slide in a flute, wood encasing the metal). That is to say that the metal tubing is inserted into the bore of the wood.
Or am I completely wrong, and the wood fits into the metal?
I keep half of an apple in my pipes case. It is a perfect humidifier and it smells good also.
In addition once every couple of years I swab down my pipes with thin orange oil, inside and out. It preserves the wood and keeps the bacteria and fungus at bay.
Yes, the wood fits into the metal. The metal ferrule is there, and at other areas of the pipes, to insure that the wood doesn’t crack or split, add a little strength to joints, and look pretty… which, on the set you have chosen for your example, they most certainly do.
My band was performing at a museum several years ago and afterwards a flute collector/physics professor came up to look a my R&R flute. It was winter in Oregon, and the temperature outside was about zero, so I placed the flute case inside my jacket as I stepped out, to keep the flute warm (I was planning on playing it a little later at a session). The prof asked me why I thought I needed to do that. I told him I thought it would help keep the wood from cracking. He proceded to explain that lots of wood outside is exposed to temperature extremes all the time and doesn’t crack, since the extreme changes are natural and gradual as opposed to sudden…like blowing into a cold instrument.
Since he was referring to letting wood warm/cool slowly, I had no answer and thought maybe I believed in a myth. I had learned from a professional wooden flute player to always warm the flute up against the body before playing it. I’ve seen wooden flutes and fifes crack because of not doing this, so I always warmed them first. He’d stick them under his arm for about 10 min. (with shirt on ).
With uilleann pipes, since there’s no sudden extreme temp changes, nor moisture, I know no reason why the wood should crack. Tons of violins, guitars, mandos, harps, and even outdoor furniture have survived for hundreds of years w/o any special attention to humidifying. Isn’t it more important to keep the humidity at a stable level, no matter what level you choose to stop at, meaning it does well at what it gets used to?
The other thing I just thought of is this: I read somewhere–I think in the Strad Magazine–that 85-90% of the moisture enters and leaves wood through the end grain. That’s why violins have the purfling around the edge of the top and back–to slow down the process. Also, that’s why other instruments like mando and guitars have banding around the edges.
So, since only 10-15% of the moisture would be absorbed through the wall or flat side of a wooden instrument, why is it that the end grain is not capped off? With a wooden flute, an open end grain would help evacuate the moisture that builds up through the inner wall/bore during playing, but what about dry reed pipes?
I’ve a friend who plays trad flute. All three flutes he owns have cracked at the tuning slide. On the other hand, I’ve never had any problems with my pipes. We talked about this and his explanation was that the flute was wood around metal, whereas the pipes are metal around wood. The humid air of the flute isn’t the problem. It’s the expansion and contraction of the wood and metal. When the wood is around the metal and the metal expands, the wood will crack. When the metal is around the wood and the wood expands, it is not strong enough to crack the metal.
I don’t know if this is the real reason but it makes sense to me.
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