Repaired crack in barrel has resumed leaking - advice?

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Loren
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Re: Repaired crack in barrel has resumed leaking - advice?

Post by Loren »

Your test will have no practical relevance to crack repairs on actual flutes as you are using different materials and not, well…….flutes. It’s not simply a case of wood is wood. Also, there is actually dedicated superglue remover available that works well in the applications related flute crack repair, which happens to also be less damaging to wood than acetone.

Instrument makers and repairers have been dealing with cracks in various ways for 100+ years. If you enjoy reinventing the wheel have at it, seems like a lot of unnecessary work, and words, however.
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Re: Repaired crack in barrel has resumed leaking - advice?

Post by alexr »

I have no experience fixing or even owning wooden flutes, but seeing GreenWood's comment about the need for a "semi-permanent no glue crack repair", two things came immediately to mind :

This website, which looks like it has not been updated for a long time, suggests filling crack in wooden flutes with a flexible 'liquid bandage' product:
http://toot.idirect.com/onekey.html
"It is applied as a liquid, and rapidly dries to form an air-tight but flexible coating, which appears to be largely chemically inert"

Second, very left-field, has anyone tried bicycle tubeless tyre sealant, blown from the inside? I use the stuff in my mountain bike tyres and it works a really well. It is basically latex emulsified in water with some added little chunks to help form blockages (homemade recipes call for glitter or ground black pepper). All you would do is block one end, put maybe 5 mils in and blow to force it into the crack. You would have some excess to first tip out, then wipe out and you might still have some traces to scrape out once it dried. Not sure how long it would last, but it keeps my tyres sealed even after it has all dried out.

Alex
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Re: Repaired crack in barrel has resumed leaking - advice?

Post by GreenWood »

Loren wrote: Fri Oct 08, 2021 6:25 pm Your test will have no practical relevance to crack repairs on actual flutes as you are using different materials and not, well…….flutes. It’s not simply a case of wood is wood. Also, there is actually dedicated superglue remover available that works well in the applications related flute crack repair, which happens to also be less damaging to wood than acetone.

Instrument makers and repairers have been dealing with cracks in various ways for 100+ years. If you enjoy reinventing the wheel have at it, seems like a lot of unnecessary work, and words, however.
That is fair enough, but instead of criticism why not link where this info is available ? The reason I am testing this is because in many years of amateur woodwork, nowhere have I found clear explanation on this.
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Re: Repaired crack in barrel has resumed leaking - advice?

Post by GreenWood »

So I started with well dried joins on an offcut, and a small cylinder of superglue.


The cylinder of 0.27g and 6.5mm height soaked in acetone from 00:00 :

Time. weight. height. squash. nail/surface

00:05 0.27g 6.5mm hard surface slippery

00:10 0.27g 6.3mm hard slippery, nail digs in very slightly (why height measured less)

00:25 0.26g 6.0mm hard as above but around 0.25mm of depth is softer

00:40 0.25g 5.9mm hard as above roughly

01:15 0.20g [surface too soft to measure ] hard (at 5.5mm) as above but soft to around 0.5mm depth from surface.

01:49 0.20g as above.


There is an unexplained weight change there, and that is from when taking the cylinder out of the acetone the top surface is very sticky and like an ordinary glue and wipes off, and that is the difference at 01:15 . The next time I took it out more carefully. When left to dry, after about half a minute it is no longer sticky or wipeable, after half an hour is firm, and after an hour is hard again.

Also the height became hard to measure because of the softer layer squashing.

So it slowly softens to a depth (around 0.5mm) and then much more slowly. This means that if the very softest glue like top layer was wiped off at various moments then eventually a wider join could be worked through.

That is a hassle I guess. I will do another experiment with the cylinder and just leave it suspended in acetone and see if or how fast the glue dissolves into the acetone by itself over time.

.....

The other experiment was of trying to seperate the equivalent of a glued cylinder of wood. I had thought of wiping it frequently but ended up sitting the outside edge in an aluminium foil cup with the seam resting on permanently acetone soaked tissue paper. After a couple of hours and not loose, I put the whole piece completely covered in a pot of acetone.

After about 5 hours of checking, a firm pull separated the join. The acetone soaks fast into the wood and swells it much, not sure if it would damage it but it should all volatise after being left to dry. This example had open grain from the cross cut allowing solvent to soak in fast to the glue join, so I suppose a length of flute would take longer, I might try a new section later with open grain sealed. A layer of glue was still visible on the join after drying. A swelled flute would not seperate so easily for a crack on one side, for the tendency being to push the gap closed.

.....

So verdict so far is "not easy" to clean, though superficial staining should be able to be wiped off without too much difficulty. If superglue is found to dissolve into acetone by itself reasonably well, then that should allow hidden surfaces to be cleaned of it by flushing maybe, or long soaks to be worthwhile. I know other components are sometimes added to solvents for cyanoacrylate cleaning, maybe they work better but they are not as easily available I think.

I also tried sikaflex fc11 and a hybrid polymer glue in acetone soak for an hour or two, did nothing but make them less rubbery or flexible, they did not have a dissolved surface.
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