Hi,

My name is Bill Fogle. I'm 45, and I've been playing clarinet as an amateur since 1992. To things I promised myself as a clarinetist: I would never make my own reeds, I'd buy them, and I would never, NEVER attempt to work on my own hard rubber mouthpieces.

Well, I still have no interest in making reeds, but I've become fascinated by what I can do to my mouthpieces. I have only three degrees of sandpaper (340, 400, and 600) plus ultra-fine steel wool and a Radio Shack set of needle files. I can hear the laughter from here!

My embarrassing, basic question for today is: How do you work on the throat (baffle) of mouthpieces? What do you use to clean, smooth out, and/or deepen it? I took a piece of #600 sandpaper that I had cut to just narrower than the width of the baffle, and I draw it through the windway in the direction of the tip while putting pressure on it with my other finger. But it messes up the tip rail, which I then have to re-establish.

A second question would be: How can you sand away the table of a mouthpiece without lengthening the window slot?

Best,
Bill.

To work on the insides it is common to wrap a strip sandpaper around your
needle files and/or other "sticks".  I use plastic glue spreading sticks
since I like that they flex a little.  You can also make sanding tools by
shaping dowels to the shape you like and gluing pads of sandpaper to them. 

The base of the window is usually undercut on a clarinet piece.  It also
usually has a 1/32" or so blunt edge.  So if you do a lot of table sanding,
the window will get longer.  You probably should not be doing that much
table sanding.  But if you do, a slightly longer window should still work.

You could trim the tip back and re-do the entire facing and exterior.  But
this is a can of worms that will probably create more problems than it will
solve.  


		
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