DIY bamboo needles and needle doping

[anchorman]

I’ve searched a bit and not found a whole lot of information on this.

Cutting needles is easy enough. Drying them is too. At some point I’m going to have to try the trick where you heat the bamboo up with a torch and then rub the resin that seeps out all over it.

My feeble understanding at the moment is that cellulose is the fiber, lignin is essentially the glue. In treating wood products to improve their properties people have leached out much of the lignin and used heat and pressure to make the cellulose more dense. Also some have used the leached out lignin to help re-bind the cellulose in its more dense form. Short of the heat and pressure in a mold method, we can exploit the nature of the cellulose “straws” to pull resin or wax into the bamboo.

I’ve successfully done this by putting just the end of a section of bamboo into a wax pot, and watched the wax move up to the top of the bamboo section through capillary action. The paraffin wax that I used, however, didn’t seem to do anything to improve the properties of the bamboo other than perhaps to make them more resistant to moisture absorption.

I’ve tried soaking in gum Arabic and letting the bamboo dry again. Not sure that this really was a benefit either. Sometime I’d like to do this in a vacuum pot in order to help the gum penetrate all the way through the bamboo. I did not use dichromate, as I’m not trying to get cancer, and I’m not sure what it does inside the bamboo where it can’t be affected by UV light to help it harden the gum.

Some other options that are perhaps worth trying are to use something like minwax wood hardener (some kind of resin in a quickly evaporating solvent) to dope the needles, or some home made resin/solvent mixture.

[anchorman]

My biggest question to others on this topic, is at what point is the bamboo needle too hard due to the introduction of resins/etc?

Part of the benefit of fiber needles of all sorts is the supposed reduction in record wear, and at some point making the needle harder and more wear resistant we may start inducing more record wear.

[anchorman]

Original doping methods seem to have used a non-drying oily substance, which seems a bit counter productive and likely to attract dirt and dust to the record surface.

Graphite appears to have been sold by reputable companies like EMG in order to reduce friction in the record grooves. Seems messy, but also seems like it would work, and help the fiber needles to keep their tips longer. Perhaps there is a way to get graphite powder embedded in the tip of a fibre needle?

[Inigo]

Some bamboo needles simply don't need anything added. I take bamboo sticks from the trash bins and cut needles from them. Some are bad, but many others are very good, to the extreme of playing several sides without repointing (from good friendly records) and lasting very long. It's a mistery to me... As it is that some records, being like new, aren't unplayable with my needles, those which have finer shellac like laminated records etc. Victors and hmvs I've found to play the best with my bamboos. Columbias and others alike are impossible, except for some cases. I've arrived to the idea that for proper tracking with bamboo needles, done degree of grinding in the shellac is desirable, for those records that are too shiny are the ones that don't work.

[Orchorsol]

An enthusiast I know found an excellent improvement using a heat treatment, I believe following techniques for treating tonewoods for musical instruments.

If only we knew the EMG secrets! Surviving Red Davey bamboo fibres sound way better than any others (and I've tried many, including susudake). Green Astras seem to be the same. I imagine they used an evolution of the gum arabic and dichromate treatments, but who knows.

As mentioned in other threads, I find ibota wax provides all the benefits that graphite did back in the day, but with no mess.

[poodling around]

Some bamboo needles simply don't need anything added. I take bamboo sticks from the trash bins and cut needles from them. Some are bad, but many others are very good, to the extreme of playing several sides without repointing (from good friendly records) and lasting very long. It's a mistery to me... As it is that some records, being like new, aren't unplayable with my needles, those which have finer shellac like laminated records etc. Victors and hmvs I've found to play the best with my bamboos. Columbias and others alike are impossible, except for some cases. I've arrived to the idea that for proper tracking with bamboo needles, done degree of grinding in the shellac is desirable, for those records that are too shiny are the ones that don't work.

I also find that there is generally no need to add anything. I make my bamboo needles from old (at least several decades old) large bamboo canes which I bought from auction many years ago.

Any 'difficult' records simply need a little bees wax.

I like experimenting though and love the orange / mahogany colour they change to when baked.

[poodling around]

An enthusiast I know found an excellent improvement using a heat treatment, I believe following techniques for treating tonewoods for musical instruments.

If only we knew the EMG secrets! Surviving Red Davey bamboo fibres sound way better than any others (and I've tried many, including susudake). Green Astras seem to be the same. I imagine they used an evolution of the gum arabic and dichromate treatments, but who knows.

As mentioned in other threads, I find ibota wax provides all the benefits that graphite did back in the day, but with no mess.

I would have thought it would be pretty easy to send a 'red Davey bamboo fibre needle' away for chemical analysis to see if there is anything special or unusual about them ?

[Orchorsol]

I would have thought it would be pretty easy to send a 'red Davey bamboo fibre needle' away for chemical analysis to see if there is anything special or unusual about them ?

I'd happily send a stub to anyone who can get that done. I have a hunch that it might not tell us enough - I imagine they probably did use gum arabic and dichromate, but that the trick probably lay in exactly how (concentration, times of immersion, darkness, drying method, etc).

[OrthoFan]

No doubt you've seen this site which discusses doping techniques -- http://www.sparkplug.org.uk/wardworks/G ... index.html

I used to know one collector who made his own bamboo needles. He told me that he packed the bamboo in silica gel crystals--the type available from florists for drying flowers--for at least two months before he cut the needles. After they were cut, he kept them in a jar with silica gel crystals.

OrthoFan

[Inigo]

I like experimenting though and love the orange / mahogany colour they change to when baked.

Do you bake them? In the oven? this I never tried... A new experiment!!!