cracks in wooden xiao

[Blue]

When I came back from my vacation in London, Turkey, and Greece, I discovered that my wooden xiao cracked! It seems that the xiao was made out of several pieces of wood glued together because I noticed an expansion in the joint. The expansion caused some scratch like cracks on the left. In my next post, I'll show you what a non-expansion should look like.

What's puzzling is that my other flutes, including bamboo flutes, didn't see to be affected by my absence.

Attachments:

[Blue]

Here's what a non-cracked joint looks like for the wooden xiao.

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[Blue]

What hurts me looking at those cracks is that this wooden xiao was given to me by someone who loves low pitched flutes.

[Blue]

Despite constant use of super glue to fully fill in the cracks in the past, my first bass A bamboo dongxiao has cracked all the way to the core. Look at the first image and you can actually see through!

Several vendors, makers, and Dongsiau were against using threads to bind this xiao and felt that super glue would be sufficient. Almost exactly one year ago, Xindi inspected this xiao with the cracks and predicted that it would crack further despite the super glue. And it did . . . . . probably caused by the humidity and cold weather.

I can still play low notes with this xiao, but the high notes seem to be devastated probably because a lot of air escapes through the crack. I didn't notice the crack until I realized that I couldn't blow the high notes no matter what.

[edcat7]

I hope it wasn't expensive. It's too late now but I was advised to gently coat the inside with almond oil 3-4 times a year. pvc xiaos doesn't seem like a bad idea now.

[ziman]

Jan 12, 2013 16:48:48 GMT Blue said:

Several vendors, makers, and Dongsiau were against using threads to bind this xiao and felt that super glue would be sufficient. Almost exactly one year ago, Xindi inspected this xiao with the cracks and predicted that it would crack further despite the super glue. And it did . . . . . probably caused by the humidity and cold weather.

Now that is odd advice from Dongsiau, considering that when I asked him how I could prevent cracks in my xiao, which I was bringing with me from Malaysia to Minnesota, binding was one of the things he advised me to do.

Then again, the Minnesotan climate is an extreme example, and perhaps this kind of cracking is less expected in Taiwan, where it's more humid.

The crack on your bamboo dongxiao should still be completely repairable-- I have seen shakuhachi makers repair worse cracks. See here for example: yungflutes.com/blog/more_winter_cracks

By the way, Minnesota being Minnesota, my xiao still cracked despite the bindings. But the bindings helped greatly in preventing the expansion of the cracks, so they stayed on the surface of the bamboo only, and did not crack into the bore. I have sent my xiao to be repaired; it should come back to me early next week.

[Blue]

The xiao cost TWD1800. Certainly not the TWD22000 charged by Dongsiau.
My mother was wondering why I wanted to take pictures of a cracked xiao using my father's camera . . . . . . If she saw the pictures here, she would be rolling her eyes . . . .