Don't Open It!

On December 30, I had a brake repair done on my car. Afterwards, the brakes stopped the car perfectly except they squealed after a few days.

I returned the car to the mechanic and he found dust—the cause of the squeal—in the brake drums of the rear wheels.

The surrounding environment of brake drums is extremely dirty while the inner environment of the brake shoes and drums must be pristine. This is just one of many contained areas that mechanics avoid unless breaching is absolutely required for repair.

My father (Melvin)—an old-school general practitioner who did as much general surgery as a surgical specialist of his day—often declared that, “You don’t open the open body unless for a damn good reason.”

Our skin is our first defense against a thoroughly hostile environment. Once the skin is breached, the extreme controls of a sterile field are required to minimize insult.

Likewise, Melvin was emphatic that the valves of a trumpet remain closed as a much as possible and to never take a piston out of its cylinder unless absolutely necessary. Not only is there the risk that the piston will be dropped or banged around, thus deforming its articular surface, as well as reinserted cockeyed or improperly timed to the slide ports, thus upsetting (even if briefly) the perfectly mated articular surfaces, BUT ALSO, like opening the innards of the body or of a machine, we invite contamination due to dust.

Chemists often cover their reactants to shield them from dust that can sometimes affect reactions. And often, this dust is invisible to the naked eye. The same protections are deserved for piston-cylinder casings. To repeat Melvin, don’t open them unless for a damn good reason.

Dust is a big problem for machines. Bearings are often sealed to keep out the dust. And the required lubricants in articulating parts attract and hold dust if sealing is breached or impossible.

[Sometimes, it’s best to avoid lubrication. I routinely advise against lubricating the weight stacks of exercise machines as the lubricant merely gums up the guiderods with dust.

Even in a vacant room with no ventilation, dust perpetually stirs and falls. Unless there is an electrostatic charge, dust bounces off guiderods. With the addition of a lubricant, the dust adheres to the guiderods.

Since ways are horizontal, they are a different concern, but most exercise machines do not have ways.]

Often, I have been horrified to observe excellent brass players who lubricate the valves of their instruments by applying oil directly to the pistons after partly removing them from their cylinders. Yikes!

I have also observed an instrument repair man—one that I considered to be the best in Central Florida—oil one of my trumpets this way. I freaked.

He then asked how I proposed he oil a valve.

I instructed him to merely pull the valve’s associated slide and drop the oil on that small area of the piston that was exposed.

He complained that at least one valve of a trumpet was not directly accessible this way because of the curve in its associated slide and that dropping oil in this way would drag contaminants from the lumen of the slide into the valve casing. He emphasized quiet correctly that the oil would act as a solvent and loosen contaminants.

I then countered that the player’s saliva was also a solvent that dragged contaminants into the valve casing, so these two concerns cancel.

He did justly correct me that my habit of dropping oil into the bottom of each valve through its air vent dragged the dirtiest of all the valve sludge up into the cleaner system.

However; this can be adjusted for by removing the valve cap, cleaning the lower end of the cylinder with an appropriate cloth, and then precisely dropping the oil on the articular surface of the cylinder above the lower end of the piston’s stroke.

We seem to possess an urge to open things and peer inside them. Apparently, it’s part of our innate curiosity.

Perhaps, it’s related to me being bitten by a copperhead when I was five because I just had to know how deep I had dug a hole into the side of a creek bed during an archeological dig.

Pandora is all around.

Books by Ken Hutchins