DIY bamboo needles and needle doping

[poodling around]

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!!!

Yes ! They dry out (no surprise there lol !) and are harder. So hard I actually bent an HMV fibre needle cutter ! Really ! Fortunately I have many different types of cutters.

They change colour and there is a lovely mild smoke aroma in the kitchen.

No additives or anything. Just the cut bamboo needles. Keep looking at them or they may turn to charcoal. Pre-heat the oven at about 180 degrees celcius and use a baking tray - bake for around 15 minutes - turning them occasionally until they are light brown or dark brown in colour. (According to your preference).

I sometimes bake them and sometimes I don't.

I think this was the EMG / Davey secret processing method lol !

Can't wait to hear what your opinion is !!!

[anchorman]

https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-shee ... -wood.html

Some info on heat treating wood. They give a variety of temperatures. But seem to mention 200c more than others. With something as thin as a piece of bamboo, it would go very quickly. This will also dry the wood very nicely, especially if you have an electric oven rather than gas - though gas oven would also dry the wood, it does produce water vapor as a side effect of combustion.

Subsequent treatment with gum Arabic or some other resin would probably return some of the strength lost, while retaining the rigidity. The question is whether a water based resin like gum Arabic will effectively soak into the wood once it’s been heat treated - due to the fact that wood is supposed to be less able to absorb water after heat treating.

[anchorman]

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

An hour or two in the oven at even 80-100c would make them dry out pretty completely in very short order. 2 months seems a long time to wait!

[anchorman]

I’m still curious how hard is too hard… surely at some point there is risk of damage to the records if they get too hard?

[anchorman]

Regarding temperature, paper burns at 451F or so (hence the book title). Most domestic ovens are not particularly accurate nor even with the heat they provide. 200c = 392F. Perhaps a little cooler as a safety margin, and then bake as long as you like. At some point whatever chemical reactions are happening will have happened, and more time shouldn’t matter. Might prevent risk of over-cooking or help with consistency.

[Inigo]

I don't know, but the article says that heat treated wood loses hardness and strength...!

[anchorman]

Most important is not loosing compressive strength. They say tensile strength is reduced, and bending strength. I would normally associate compressive strength with hardness. They do say that it becomes more brittle, which I assume to mean that it gets stiffer.

The fact that it is less impacted by moisture post treating makes me think that overall increase in stiffness, seems like a good thing. I’ve got a bunch of consistently cut pieces that I made using a jig to be able to split the bamboo and then shave it relatively precisely, and can try baking a few pieces, leaving a few raw, and see what happens.

My other long term goal was to try soaking/boiling in various waxes, to see if a harder one than paraffin might work better.

[anchorman]

I did some experiments tonight with baking bamboo fibre needles in the oven. I preheated the oven to ~400F/204C, and baked samples for 15,30,45, and 60 minutes respectively. All of them took on a darker color compared to the unbaked bamboo. The pieces were cut triangularly to fit the needle holder on a Columbia 15a (uk) soundbox before baking.

If you shine a very bright light into the end of the bamboo and look at it from the side, the end almost looks translucent with the raw bamboo. The longer it was baked, the less translucent glow at the tip (looking at an un-pointed sample), with 60 minutes being almost entirely opaque at the end. One can also notice this just looking with light shining through the side of the bamboo, where the unbaked piece is very translucent in the thinner parts, and the baked pieces being transmitting less light at the edges.

The baked needle seemed to hold up a little better, but I can’t tell for sure how much better. My ears couldn’t tell any real difference in the tonal quality of the two needles before they distorted.

Once they got cut and lost an ⅛” or so of length, they tended to wear out and distort faster, mostly, I think, due to sub-optimal soundbox geometry. Pulling the needle out of the sound box so that it was closer to the original full length allowed play all the way through the recording again with less distortion. What’s interesting is how much more needle stick out there is compared to ordinary steel needles when these are new, and playing most optimally. Im not sure if when the needle gets shorter if it is causing the needle bar ratio to climb too high wearing the needle faster, or if it’s bad geometry causing wear and the distortion before the end of the record. When new, the bamboo is about 1-1/16” long. It sticks out to the outer edge of the spindle on the Columbia 202. Used, the needle is about 13/16” long, and touched about the middle of the spindle when at record height. For comparison, A soundgen sourced extra soft needle is about at the inside edge of the spindle when the needle is at record height. I usually use a bit of extra stick out with the steel needles to bring closer to the middle of the spindle.

For what it’s worth, I’ve been listening to RCA VICTOR 11-9065, Chopin’s polonaise in A flat. This is a relatively loud recording and also kills Burmese colour needles before they make it all the way through using this machine. Playing an acoustically recorded disc, such as Victor 19007-A, Paul whiteman’s “parade of the wooden soldiers” is not a challenge for the baked nor the unbaked bamboo despite not being in perfect condition.

I’ll have to try baking for longer times and see if there is any benefit. I also need to try baking and then soaking in paraffin wax to see if there is any benefit of records with rough surface, like the A side of this one.

[JerryVan]

I’m still curious how hard is too hard… surely at some point there is risk of damage to the records if they get too hard?

Well, it's never going to be as hard as steel, so I think you'd be safe.

[JerryVan]

I find it fun that after some 120 years of sound reproduction, some folks are still trying to perfect the phonograph needle.

Reminds me of the line from The Rolling Stones song, "19th Nervous Breakdown".

"And your father's still perfecting ways of making sealing wax"