I sat down to clean the slightly tarnished brightwork on a clarinet. I must have entered the zone. When I surfaced, three and a half hours had gone by. I couldn’t access everything because the keys are rather closely spaced.
I am a bit in awe of the complexity of the mechanism. I am looking at the product of centuries of engineering.
I learned that the keys on my model are cold-forged from an alloy called maillechort, an alloy made of copper, nickel and zinc.
In English it is called German silver. The Germans cal it alpacca. Note the extra C that distinguishes it from the new world camelid.
Now I’m gonna watch vids on disassembly and (more importantly) reassembly of the keys, so I can clean the occluded bits. I’m not sure I dare disassemble it completely. From what I read, each screw and rod is unique. I don’t want to inadvertently swap or invert parts.
As for playing it, so far all I’ve done is make sounds a Canada goose would recognize as depraved suggestions. But it is a very nice bit of hardware.
