Posted by Klaus on July 16, 2002 at 06:51:44:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Can bumpers be too soft? posted by js on July 15, 2002 at 23:17:33:
High quality natural cork is in short supply. Worldwide.
However it is a wonderful material to work with.
I have fitted immense numbers of rotary bumpers and re-padded several mutes. All by means of natural cork.
My source is the local equivalent of you drug stores (not really the same type of store). They sell equipment for one of the, actually legal, Danish national sports: homebrewing of "wine" (our taxes are immense, but I never took up this sort of athletics). There I can have solid bottle corks. Not all in a bag being of an acceptable quality, but some are very good.
The rest of the trick is about knowing how to choose a good knife and knowing how to use it. Also being a recorder player I can not afford funny scars on and lacking sensitivity in my fingertips (I still can play the recorders having 21 of them in 7 sizes. And no: not 3 in each size).
I hate composite cork made up of cork dust and some gluing agent. That material stiffens up far too fast to be used as bumpers, and then it disintegrates. With mutes the cork component dries out fast and leaves a cobweb-like surface of glue, that has no real grip inside a bell. And even worse: the often hard-handed attempts to make it grip expose the bells to much unwanted wear.
That problem might not be a big issue for members of this board, where bell-ups are the norm. But coming from the trombone side, I can say, that it is less than wonderful if a mute slips and knocks your slide on its way to a noisy landing at the floor. Fortunately no knocked slides for me so far (knock on cork, isn't that some sort of wood?), but that situation has been seen.
If you have to resort to composite cork, then go for the type used in champagne corks. There the cork component is represented by much larger grains. And the glue component is much softer.
A long rant, but if I will leave no other long lasting contributions to our common heritage of humanity, then there always will be this experience of a long life as given to all of you in the lines above.
Klaus