Paleoaleo
17th March 2007, 11:53 AM
Does anyone have experience with Black Bamboo for flutes? I recently acquired my first batch, and had bad experiences with it cracking.
Tom
California, USA
KODOAN
7th April 2007, 04:49 PM
I've made bamboo flutes for the past twenty years and have occassionally used black bamboo. It is by far THE MOST PRONE TO CRACKING than any other type. The pieces that don't crack are beautiful and sound great though!
Mark Meckes
7th April 2007, 10:25 PM
Tom, did you get your bamboo from a domestic, locally grown source?
The reason I ask is that fresh harvested bamboo that is initially lightly heat tempered prior to allowing it to cure dry appears to relax or disperse tension points and can result in a higher percentage of bamboo that doesn't split.
In addition to the age of bamboo at harvest time, another factor affecting a culms splitting tendancy are the conditions incurred during the drying stages from harvest time to it's actual use. ... such as the balanced amount of sun or heat exposure on all sides of a culm, and fluctuations or periods of moisture and humidity that can cause a weakening of the adhesive quality between fibers that might seperate/split apart where tension occurs.
I'm unsure why, or even on what scale of the 90+ Phyllostachys species that one would place Phyllostachys nigra, in terms of tendancy to split, as a lot of Phyllostachys species can split under certain conditions, and much of this can be attributed to post harvest methods.
It's just that due to it's unique color and popularity, more people have used P. nigra that the many other Phyllostachys species.
One thing though is the growing stature of P. nigra, which has very arching tops, and as newer culms emerge, older culms can veer out an an angle, such as illustrated here:
http://www.bamboocraft.net/bamboo/data/527/medium/PnigraAuTX060513-2896.jpg (http://www.bamboocraft.net/bamboo/showphoto.php?photo=3306)
Heavy rains and especially ice storms can bend culms to the ground, and though they will stand back up, it could create some tension in the culms that could later result in splitting.
In this pic, see how an ice storm caused the outer waxy coating to crackle, though there was no apparent crackling of the skin:
http://www.bamboocraft.net/bamboo/data/527/medium/PnigAuTX070201-4558.jpg (http://www.bamboocraft.net/bamboo/showphoto.php?photo=3948)
It had been three years since we had our last major culm bending ice storm:
http://www.bamboocraft.net/bamboo/data/527/thumbs/PnigAuTX030305-01.JPG (http://www.bamboocraft.net/bamboo/showphoto.php?photo=3197) http://www.bamboocraft.net/bamboo/data/527/thumbs/PnigAuTX030305-02.JPG (http://www.bamboocraft.net/bamboo/showphoto.php?photo=3196)
... which illustrates that events that happen during the life of a culm could possibly affect a culm during it's 'after life' when it is put into other uses.
... though as I mentioned, it is possible to relax a bamboo using heat, preferrably before the circulatory juices are removed and the fibers and cell walls have dried and stiffened, locking in tension.
... just an opinion ...;)
Mark