Monday, February 5, 2024

The Anti-Roll Bag

 




Anti-Roll Tanks for boats have been around for over a century.  They basically consist of a tank that runs athwart ship filled with water.  When the vessel heels to port, a surface wave (or the entire volume of water) runs to port.  Various methods control the water's arrival until just after the boat has begun to rock back to starboard.  The water's additional weight transfer, and the water's momentum in hitting the port side of the tank, effectively neutralizes some of the righting force, i.e., it takes some of the "snap" out of the recovery and reduces the ability of the boat to begin synchronous "increasing" rolling (as when encountering the wake of another vessel).

There has been a considerable amount of research on "fine tuning" the tanks for a certain roll period, vessel hull design, etc.  Over the years, changes to the anti-roll tank’s placement, shape, internal baffles, etc. have been tried to increase the effectiveness. There are also tanks which are not “free surface” and have constrictions, pressurized air, water pumps, etc. to increase effectiveness. Of course, the more complex the system, usually called “active” systems, the more likely the system can fail. 

My idea was to experiment with a strong bias towards the KISS principle. I’m not looking for a system that would need to respond effectively to 30-degree rolls or stabilization in 10-foot seas. I’m just looking to calm my boat’s “excessive stability,” caused in part by its large beam to length ratio (10.5’ x 29’ at the waterline). It has a deeper than average single keel (46”) but even still the boat is “snappy.”

My flying bridge is about 8.5 feet across (and 10.5 feet above the waterline). I bought 3 yards of vinyl coated polyester (54” wide) and heat welded it into a bag, adding a fill port. That produced an anti-roll bag (ARB) that was about 24” across and 9’ long for about $100. I wanted the extra length because I figured that in a big roll, a lot of water would go into the end of the ARB and I didn’t want to constrict that motion. As you can see from the video below, it may still constrict some of the water despite the extra room at the end.

Wave speed is affected by several variables. One of the variables is the pressure above the liquid surface. By not having a “free surface” and using the tension of the bag, I think the wave is slowed a little. We are talking about a fraction of a second. My boat’s roll period is about 3.4 seconds. That makes port side up to port side down 1.7 seconds. If I can slow the side-to-side water transfer down to 1.8 seconds, mission accomplished. Filling the ARB semi-tight (about 20 gallons) with no air in it seemed to do the trick.  That is 166 lbs. (less than I weigh).  While I don't normally run back and forth on the flying bridge, I'm sure the structure can handle the weight shift.

Here is a short video of the bag in action on my flying bridge. This was taken while crossing the Straight of Juan de Fuca. We were experiencing occasional 10-degree rolls (one 11 degree) in a beam sea from swells coming in from the Pacific.  I was measuring using an inclinometer app on my phone.  The 10 degree rolls were always the result of building synchronous rolls, never just a 10 degree roll out of the blue.  You probably know the feeling.  It starts with 3 degrees one way, 6 the other, and you can then tell the next will be even bigger.

I then filled the ARB using my potable water. You can see that when I roll to starboard, the port side of the bag is almost empty. When rolling to port, the water would arrive just as the port started to lift (and the same on the other side). We no longer built synchronous rolls to 10 degrees. 6 was the max, the building was less frequent, and the rolls subsided faster. A noticeably better ride. With no air inside the bag, the water moving back and forth could not be heard from the lower helm.


I should have put the camera on a tripod or steadied it better.  That would have given a better understanding of the relationship between  the boat's rocking motion and the arrival of the "wave."  But the horizon can be seen just over the coaming on the left.  The boat tips to port, and just as it begins to lift, the bulk of the water arrives and shuts down the snap back to starboard.  Not completely, as can be seen, but enough to make quite a difference for the safety and comfort of passengers.

I also tested the ARB in the marina.  I rocked the boat myself by standing on the dock and using my weight on-and-off to get the boat rocking.  Seven degrees was possible without attracting too much attention.  Seven degrees was difficult when the bag was full, as the shifting water was fighting me.  But what I was interested in was the "roll decay" caused by the ARB.  For this, I switched to an accelerometer app.  That would show the timing and decay of the rocking, rather than the roll angle.

Unfortunately, I didn't notice two things about the application.  First, it matter somewhat as to whether the phone was level.  For the first test, I had the phone at the helm.  I then filled the tank and put the phone on the side deck, where it wasn't level.  That moved the "zero point" off center.  Second, I didn't notice that the application had an automatic set on the Y axis (the vertical scale).  Note that the first test (ARB empty) shows .5 as the first metric and the second text (ARB full) shows 1 as the first metric.  But basically, the max acceleration is .1 G.  And again, what I was interested in was the rate of decay.

Here, it took me over 30 seconds to get the boat rocking to the point I wanted.  You can see that the sine waves prior to about 32 seconds (X axis) have an asymmetric peak.  That is a result of me jumping back and forth off the boat to get it too rock.  Once I stopped, letting the rocking decay naturally, it took about 30 seconds for the G force to halve.



Here with the ARB filled, it took me 150 seconds to get my boat rocking to approximately the same .1 G force and only 20 seconds for it to dwindle to almost nothing.  As can be seen, ARB stabilization is just as effective at anchor.

I’ve read quite a few studies on how to slow down the wave speed in a regular tank. Baffles and complex plumbing seem to be common. One study had diagrams of 6 different shaped tanks with variable baffles. It seems to me that one of the problems is simply the liquid that is always used. Water.  If one used maple syrup, the wave would naturally be slower (but there would be other issues, of course). 

It might be possible to adjust the wave's motion by adding rock salt to regular seawater.  It increases the density (as shown in the picture above from the Dead Sea), causing the newspaper reader to float abnormally high in the water.  You can also see the effect of the increased viscosity in the picture.  See the little wave just below the newspaper reader?  It isn't "splashing" over like a normal white cap.  It is "slopping" over.  That is the increased viscosity that might slow a wave by the needed fraction of a second.

In looking at what liquid could have the right "sluggish" viscosity, I came across what is called “thick water.” It is water to which food-grade calcium chloride is added, possibly to the extent of making it goopy to the point of way too viscous.  But there might be a water to calcium chloride ratio that would slow the wave down without baffles, etc. As a plus, calcium chloride doesn’t increase the liquid volume, meaning that adding 2 pounds of calcium chloride to a gallon of water (8.34 pounds) results in the gallon of solution weighing 10.34 pounds. Thus, slowing the motion while increasing the liquid’s effective mass. We shall see.


Thursday, January 25, 2024

DIY Muffler for Diesel Heater

When I installed a diesel heater on my boat, I was concerned about the exhaust noise.  I had tried the muffler that came with the heater, but it was a fail for two reasons.  1) It was spot welded around the edges and therefore was not possible to use aboard.  It would leak exhaust fumes inside.  2) It barely worked.  There are two versions of the little stainless muffler that comes with these diesel heaters, although they look identical on the outside.  One is a straight-through design and the other has a little bend.  They are a "glass pack" style of muffler with the exhaust pipe, having perforations, going though a canister filled with spun fiberglass.  But they are tiny and barely take the edge off of the whining exhaust note.

I decided to build my own.  The flexible stainless steel exhaust pipe that came with my heater was about 23mm.  That slipped over standard copper 3/4" pipe in my scrap pile.  I also had a few feet of 1.5" copper pipe.  I bought a couple end caps for the 1.5" pipe and went about building my muffler.  I drilled a bunch of little holes (1/8") in the center section of the 3/4" copper pipe.  I then drilled holes in the ends of the 1.5" end caps to fit the O.D. of the 3/4" pipe.  I soldered one end cap on the 1.5" pipe, slipped the 3/4" pipe through, filled the 1.5" pipe with spun fiberglass (from my attic insulation), put it all together and soldered it up (high-temp solder).

Here it is next to the stainless muffler that came with my diesel heater.


On the right is a 3/4" elbow and then a little length of the flexible stainless exhaust tubing that came with the heater. It is sealed with a hose clamp and high temp silicon.  I also attached a little of the stainless exhaust tubing on the other end (which then attaches to the through-hull) to make alignment easy.

Since my fabricated muffler is 4 times longer than the stainless muffler, I was expecting an improvement.  But it was even better than expected.  A neighbor in the marina asked how my diesel heater project was going and I told him that it was running as we were talking.  But it can't be heard.  I decided to make a video/sound recording.  To actually hear it, I had to climb on the boat next to me and hold my phone down by the exhaust outlet.  Even then, I had to turn up the microphone sensitivity.  Unfortunately, every time I recorded, some gulls started screaming a few docks away.  But it is possible to hear the heater if one were in a dinghy passing by a few feet away.


Here is another recording that I made at a really quiet anchorage in northwest British Columbia.  I stuck the phone out the window right above the diesel heater exhaust.  Dang it, again the background noise covered up the sound of the heater exhaust.



Wednesday, November 8, 2023

Saxophone Stuffy Second D Stuff

I once started a list of all of the various remedies for a stuffy 2nd D (D2).  Sometimes the complaint also included a warbling low D1 (or lower notes).  The list of possible fixes got so long and complicated that it was of little value.  Although some claim that their D2 is stuffy, others describe the same problem as D2 being unstable or weak.  There is a general agreement that D2 is an unstable note and is an acoustical compromise.  Since there are various solutions to eliminating a stuffy D2, many of which actually work, it appears that D2 can be unstable in various ways or for various reasons.  That makes finding a universal fix impossible.

One of the primary causes of instability is that the octave pip for D2 serves several other tone holes.  What we are fighting isn't that the D2 tone hole is too low on the body tube (or the pip too high), it is that the octave pip placement is a compromise.  The idea of creating an octave pip for every key has been done, but it has its limitations (hence the article's term Frankinsax for the "pipped out" horn).  The body tube octave pip on every normal saxophone is too far from D2 and too close to G#2, all of which area the second pip is supposed to service.  The pip being too far or too close effects the pitch.  Too close makes the note flat and too far away makes it sharp.  The size of the pip opening, the size of the tone hole, and the height of the pad can also alter pitch.

Before I get back to a sharp or stuffy D2 issue, I'm going to effectively "move the octave pip" for E2.  First, blow low E1 and then use your octave key.  Your low E might be a couple of cents sharper than E2.  That's because the pip is also too high on the tube for E2.  We know that by comparing the pip location to where the pad for E3 is located.  The E3 tone hole is actually the correct mathematical and acoustical placement for an E2 pip, but since we have only one pip serving several notes, a compromise is made.  (One could argue that it isn't the number of octave pips that is the problem, it is the player's limited number of fingers.)

We can use the palm E3 key as though it were a correctly placed octave pip.  Play E1 using your pinky and ring finger to push down F1 and E1.  That leaves your index finger to operate the side E3 key as the new octave pip.  Play E1 and press side E3 instead of the octave key.  It should work perfectly for E2.  Actually, it works too good because it over-vents because of the pad size.  If you just barely crack the side E3, you will get a note that is in tune.  If you open it completely, it goes a little sharp, or it goes sharper.  So the size of the pip opening also affects pitch.

We now see what happens when the octave pip is too high or too low on the body tube.  Play E1 as before and crack open the F3 palm key.  Instead of a nice E2, you now get a sharp E2, which is the result of the "octave pip" being too far away.  Play E1 and crack open the palm Eb3 key.  Now instead of E2 you will get something considerably flatter.  That's the acoustical problem in sax design that is compensated by pip placement, pip opening size, tone hole placement, tone hole size, key heights , and who knows what else.  But it is always a compromise.  Also notice that each of these is just some form of "venting."  More venting, less venting, venting higher or lower on the body tube.

We can do similar experiments for an unstable D2.  If D2 is unstable and you press the C# LH pinky key (a common remedy), that is adding additional venting lower on the horn.  It is kind of a clunky solution for the player, but workable.  In an attempt for a less clunky solution, some raise the low C pad as another way to increase venting lower on the horn without pressing additional keys.  This works, but it doesn't really help if D2 is also sharp, in fact, it often makes the note louder and sharper.  Less stuffy, but not really an improvement.  One of the other low tube venting fixes is to put a "cresent" in the C tone hole chimney to effectively make the body tube longer when sounding D2.  Of course, this also lowers the pitch of low D1, and then compromises must be made with the pad heights to try to get D1 sharper while getting D2 to remain flatter.  Sometimes this works.

If D2 is stuffy and you press the D3 palm key, that is adding additional venting higher on the horn.  This fingering is even clunkier, but often works better.  Some have drilled out the upper pip hole as a way to increase venting higher on the horn with just the standard fingering.  I've seen some claims of success, but I tend to be skeptical of many of these improvements.  For one thing, many who initially have a stuffy D2 issue report that it goes away after some hours (or days) of playing.  Practice, practice, practice actually has an effect.  That make it a little difficult to be certain that a drilled out pip or piece of something glued into a tone hole is actually the fix.  It could be that getting familiar with the horn was the actual fix.

A third solution, not often mentioned, is changing the mouthpiece.  Because D2 is the least stable note, that is a spot where an acoustical mouthpiece miss-match will often show itself.  Spread octaves can also result, but this is often worked around with practice.   A mouthpiece that effectively magnifies the instability of D2 is a more time consuming work around.  

As noted above, sometimes stuffy D2 seems to go away on its own.  Or, you can try a long list of "folk remedies."  We all know practice, practice, practice.  But there are others like blow warm air, or pretend that there is honey under your tongue, or push your chin forward, or flair your nostrils, or think of England, etc. (Do not try these all at once).  I think that through adopting these various fixes players can reinforce a Pavlovian response so that every time they get to D2 they radically change their embouchure and breath support.  Don't worry about those people who swear by these fixes being offended by me calling them "folk cures."  Those people aren't reading this, they are too busy practicing.  

There is nothing wrong with practicing.  However, I think that there are more important things to practice than getting a stable D2 or eliminating a warbling D1 if there is another way (i.e., a mechanical way) of eliminating the instability.  And I don't mean to imply that D1 and D2 will ever be exactly the same when doing an octave trill, just close enough that you don't have to think "embouchure and breath support" every time you play D2. 

Usually all we need is to get D2 and D1 closer togetherPlay D1 and slowly trill back and forth to D2 by using the octave key.  You might have a 15 cent change in pitch and a big change in resistance and tonal quality on a problem horn.  D1 tends to play in tune with the lower stack and is more in tune with the upper stack than is D2.  That means that D2 is the outlier and you will need to remember to change your embouchure and breath support every time you hit that note and back again every time you play a subsequent note after D2.  But if we can get D1 and D2 within 5 cents, then we can effectively ignore the difference, which is what we want. 

I'm not going to move the pip.  Moving it closer to the low D tone hole would make D2 flatter, but make G2 sharper.  I'm not going to drill out the pip, although some claim that it can be a remedy for stuffiness.  I'm not going to move the tone hole.  That leaves me with adjustments to tone hole size and key height.

We can flatten the pitch of D2 by adding a cresent to the "up stream" side of the tone hole used to produce D2 (the C tone hole) That effectively moves the tone hole further down the body tube.  If the problem is that the tone hole is too far away from the body pip, a cresent overcomes the sharpness by overcompensating on the tube length.  It will also make D1 slightly sharper, but maybe not enough to be objectionable.  

What if, instead of making the tube effectively longer, we made it effectively shorter?  Well maybe not shorter, just sharper.  If we put the cresent on the furthest edge of the tone hole (i.e., on the down stream side), it reduces the size of the tone hole but it doesn't increase the effective distance between the pip and the tone hole, which we have sort of determined as too long for D2.  So what does just reducing the size of the tone hole do for us?  This is where things get wonky.  Reducing the size of a tone hole has the effect of lengthening the tube.  Again, a smaller tone hole will also have the effect of making D1 slightly sharper, but again, maybe not enough to be objectionable.

Here I am halfway through this blog and I'm still talking about octave pip positions and gluing stuff in tone holes.  I haven't even gotten into adjusting key heights, another "fix" that might have an effect.  As I said above, unless every player that has your model of saxophone has the same problem, we are probably "masking" a problem, not "fixing" a problem.  What we need to examine is the "cause," not the fix.  If other players don't have the issue with pip placement and tone hole size, then those are not really the cause even though monkeying with that stuff can improve things.

What is weird about the two common, and to seemingly opposite, solutions often working (fingerings that increase low vent or increase high vent) is that neither one of them is likely the actual cause.  They might mask the problem, making us think that lower (or higher) venting was the issue when it wasn't actually the problem.  These fixes are the same as changing pip size and location, adding cresents, and adjusting a key pad heights.


Saxophones being what they are (a tube with an effective length adjusted by sealing consecutive openings), it is safe to say that the "seal" part of the adjustable length is going to almost always be the issue.  If your brand of sax is common enough, and other players don't have the same issue, then you cannot blame the design of the sax.  Maybe you can blame your mouthpiece if it is radically different from what other players are using.  Maybe it's your personal embouchure, oral cavity, lung capacity, etc., but now we are getting pretty far afield from what is likely causing your pitch problems.  

My experience has been that, sooner or later, I will come across the actual cause of a stuffy, weak D2 or a warbling D1 (and below).  And the root cause has always been a leak.  For some reason when told this a player's first response is "My horn doesn't leak!"  Maybe it just got back from the shop and the tech told them that it doesn't leak.  Maybe it has a couple new pads or all new pads.  Maybe the player spent hours with a leak light.  Fine.  But far and away the number one cause of a weak or unstable D is a leak.

If you are lying in bed and find that water is dripping on you, is there a leak?  Your roofer says there isn't a leak and water is still dripping on you.  Is there a leak?  If the Google solution is to cover your roof with a blue tarp, have you fixed the problem?  How about just covering your bed?  Fixed?

If we accept that the cause is a leak, then here are some places to look (in no particular order).  As I said way back at the start of this blog, when I started making a list it got very long and often included some of the "blue tarp" solutions that I have already mentioned.  Here are places where a surprisingly tiny leak can wreak havoc on D2.  Keep in mind that these leaks are affecting other notes, it's just that D2 being the least stable is affected the most.

I've found that the leaks that are most likely to affect D1 (warbling) are those near the "would be" correct position of an octave pip for that note.  Leaks further down the sax tube can make for a weak response, but not unstable warbling.  The most difficult to detect is a neck tenon leak.  Because of the distance the air travels (actually vibrates) out from the neck tenon, the effective leak is further along the neck than you would think.  In fact, the leak around the neck tenon might not be in a straight line, meaning that air could travel around the back of the tenon and out the top of the tenon on the opposite side.  A leaking neck tenon may have the same effect as a leaking lower pip, even though the lower pip is several inches further down the horn.  (Although further down the horn, it is the "air path distance" that matters, so a tenon leak has the acoustical effect of a pip about 2 inches below the joint).

The lower pip is placed where it is most effective to break the harmonics and cause low notes to jump up an octave.  A tiny leak there (or effectively there) can cause warbling from E1 on down.  If the warbling starts low or is only low, then I would be suspicious that a leak is acting as a "false octave pip" or "ghost vent" in a corresponding upper key. For instance, if the side Bb2 key not sprung tight enough that can cause Bb1 to be unstable and warble (because it almost wants to jump an octave).

Likewise, if D1 is unstable and shaky but the surrounding notes seem better, first check the upper D palm key, the natural place for the D2 octave vent.  I fought with a warbling D1 on an old tenor.  I just could not play softly without a soft pulsating vibrato (that wasn't me controlling the vibrato).  A small chamber mouthpiece helped, but that's not what I wanted to play.  It turned out the the palm D3 key had a very light spring on it.  The pad didn't leak light, but apparently playing D1 caused enough vibration at that point such that the pad leaked just enough air to cause D1 to almost jump to D2.  One would think that playing at volume would really make D3 leak, but that didn't seem to be the case.  At volume, I was in control of the D1 pitch.  At ppp, it always felt like D1 was in control of me.  A new, stiffer spring changed that.

Probably enough rantings about warbling D.  Hopefully, it can give somebody a clue where to start the search.

Friday, January 8, 2021

The Gale Triple-Rail Mouthpiece

One of the oddest mouthpieces that I have come across is the Gale "Triple-Rail" mouthpiece.  Lots of vintage mouthpieces have tried things to differentiate themselves from conventional mouthpieces.  Odd shaped chambers, metal tables, anything to make the mouthpiece stand out.  Of course, the manufacturer also has to make a claim as to why the design modification is superior, or what problem it solves, or how it improves the sound or tuning or something.  As we have seen with musical accessories, the claim doesn't need to be true or even make sense.  

Most of the inventive changes to saxophone mouthpieces over the years claim that the modification improves the sound when in fact it is often only the visual aspect of the mouthpiece that has changed.  The white Brilhart Tonolin mouthpiece is claimed to sound different than the original black Brilhart Ebolin mouthpiece.  Nobody can agree on what the acoustical difference is, and nobody can tell in a blind testing, so there is not likely any difference caused by the color.  Also, having been produced by the same mold makes a rational person doubt any acoustical difference.  But as musicians, we don't have to be rational.  I am sure that some would argue that they know what a red Brilhart Rubylin mouthpiece would sound like.  Maybe bloody good?  A rosy tone?

Mouthpieces have occasionally taken on a novelty design.  I believe that the Gale Triple-Rail is one of those.  Try as I might, I could find no information on just what problem the "middle rail" was intended to solve.  Or what improvement resulted from having a rail down the middle of the chamber.  A radical design change should be a refinement that outweighs any negatives caused by the change.  That doesn't seem to have happened with the Triple-Rail.  There was no "up side" and lots of "down side."

First, some background.  In about 1948, Mr. Carl Satzinger formed a corporation with several of the principals from Rico Products, famous for their woodwind reeds.  Mr. Satzinger was the son-in-law of a Rico employee who was involved with Rico's mouthpiece fabrication.  Mr. Satzinger had some college training as an engineer and started a business with Roy Maier, Frank De Michelle, and Nathan Snyder, all principals at Rico.  The venture was incorporated and Mr. Satzinger opened his own shop with a business address.  The company was named "Gale Products" after Mr. Satzinger's daughter Gale.

Gale Products was short lived, lasting less than a year.  Some of the first mouthpieces stamped Gale appear to have been made from blanks using Rico's existing line of mouthpieces (the M.C. Gregory model).  But others were clearly from different blanks, maybe even designed by Mr. Satzinger.  The Gale Products molds were sold to a local jeweler when Gale was dissolved after less than a year.  The jeweler later sold them to Charles Bay, a well-known clarinet instructor and mouthpiece facer.  Below is a picture of a selection of blanks made from the Gale Products molds.  


The Gale Products Triple-Rail mouthpiece that I'm writing about is a curious modification of one of the Gale molds.  If you look at the above picture, it is shown on the lower  right, the third one in (with an aluminum shank band).  There is a rib or "rail" down the center of the chamber.  There is another Triple-Rail on the upper right, second one in.  That one apparently had the rib mostly broken off.  There is no way of knowing what percentage of the Triple-Rail castings ended up defective, but it would certainly make production more costly than a regular chamber.

The following are pictures of my unfinished Gale Triple-Rail blank.




There are a couple of things that stand out about this rough blank.  First, the mold line on the beak doesn't seem to run down the center of the beak.  When looking from the tip (above picture), you can see how asymmetrical the tip is.  That is not going to be very easy to work with.  It requires a lot of shaping, something that the molding process was intended to reduce.  Even the third rail down the middle isn't symmetrical.  This appears on many, but not all Third-Rail mouthpieces.  There is simply no way to fix that when finishing the blank.

Another common flaw on these is that the middle rail tend to chip right where it meets the top of the window.  The picture below is a close-up of the flaw on my blank.  Right at the top of the rail a tiny piece is missing.  Not that it matters, as we will see when this mouthpiece is finished.  



The actual middle rib is often warped and can have minor casting flaws on it.  In the picture below you can see a little blister on the "curtain" that forms the middle rail.  It could be removed but I didn't bother.  You can also see that the inside of the mouthpiece suffers from the brown oxidation found on most 75 year-old ebonite mouthpieces.

I wrote the original lay on the blank.  It was fairly even side-to-side, but with a close tip opening at .050 inch for an alto mouthpiece.  The lay is 20 mm (a Brand number of 40) which is long for that tip.  This is probably a preliminary lay from which a larger and more precise lay can be fabricated.  On the following picture, you can again see at the start of the third rail the little indentation from a tiny bit of material missing as was mentioned above.


I was curious if the three rails were all even.  Normally, when using a ruler to measure the lay, you have only two rails.  What if the middle rail was high?  Or low?  Turns out that it basically has to be low.  But in first examining it I got a little moisture on the glass and pressed the rails against it to see how they lined up.  The middle rail seemed a little high.  Any side-to-side pressure difference when putting on a facing would cause the center rib to be higher.  Uneven rails can be a problem, but the center rail would really accentuate even a tiny difference that would normally be unnoticeable.



I began by cleaning up the lopsided beak profile.  That wasn't too difficult, but it is time consuming.  Filing makes for fast work, but then one has to work through different grits of sandpaper (300 to 1200) and then bronze wool and finally polish.  It probably took 40 minutes on what could have been a 5 minute project to clean up the flash line left by the mold.  This flash line formed a surprising deep crevice that also had to be removed.

Next was flattening the table and beginning the cut for the lay.  I should note that the tip opening I wrote on the table above was kind of an interpolation.  Because there is rail right down the center of the tip opening, the usual methods of measuring were not possible.  With the Triple-Rail, the tip opening can be a bit of a guess.  

The Triple-Rail leaves a weird track on the paper.

I thought that the drop into the chamber at the tip looked like it might sound a little dull.  Time to think about maybe working the insides towards the tip and get a little baffle.  Unlike a normal mouthpiece, this meant working on both sides of a middle rail. 


I rounded off the tip to fit the reed and that gave me an indication of how to shape the inner tip rail and baffle.  Shaping was time consuming because of the middle rail.  I have seen other Third-Rail  pieces that still have file marks, probably because it is a pain to work only in and out with sand paper instead of side to side.  Also notice above that the width of the outer railings are not even.  It was odd that the widest "1/2 chamber" at the top of the picture also had the widest outside rail.  More work cleaning that up.  And the bottom inner rail has a wow in it.  More work.


As I got closer to finished, it became obvious that the unevenness of the beak was revealing itself.  More time spent of making the beak symmetrical.  Plus, you can still see the offset mold line.  More time.


Finally, a chance for a test blow.  It was dull.  No altisimo.  In fact, it started to fade at about high D.  It sounded like the lay was bumpy at the tip.  I checked it again and everything looked okay.  I knew that on most every picture of a Triple-Rail that I had seen the third rail did not actually go all the way to the tip.  Some of them had the rail stopping well short of the tip.  Maybe 2 mm away.  So I fabricated a little tool with 1200 grit emery paper attached to a split reed.  I wet-sanded down the rail right at the tip.  Better.  I sanded more.  Even better.  The further the rail was from the reed, the better the response.  But after reducing the height of the rail I had to go back and make sure that the tip rail hadn't been nicked by the sandpaper.  More time spent because of a rail down the middle.


Finally I had a responsive mouthpiece.  Did it have any special color to the sound?  No.  It was just a nice vintage piece.  This mouthpiece was not marked in any way and never had the three white dots put on it, but adding dots is really a simple (although time consuming) project that, like the third rail, adds nothing to the piece (for most players).

From the estate of Charles Bay.

Here is the finished mouthpiece.


No markings or white dots.


The interior had a lot of oxidation that I haven't yet cleaned up.  Which raises another practical problem with the Triple-Rail (problem #22?).  How do you swab out the mouthpiece to keep it from looking like this?  This blank had never even been played!  Is there a special Rico Triple-Rail mouthpiece swab?  My guess is that Mr. Satzinger's experienced business partners would have nixed the idea of having Satzinger design a Triple-Rail mouthpiece swab.



So what's the deal with the Gale Triple-Rail?  I've read that they have a cool Paul Desmond West Coast vibe.  That's probably because one of Rico's other mouthpiece models at the time was the M.C. Gregory, which is what Mr. Desmond played.  If you believe in the transmogrification of acoustical characteristics through corporate affiliation, then the business involvement of Roy Maier and Frank De Michelle of Rico Products spilled over into Gale Products, infusing both mouthpieces with identical characteristics despite different molds, finish quality, and one having a rib down the middle of the chamber.

I don't buy the assertion.  It seems more like wishful thinking.  The unrelated Gale mouthpieces were the brainchild of Carl Satzinger.  It is true that the principals of Rico Products were on the Board of Directors of Gale Products, but I would guess that is why Gale failed after one year.  Satzinger was an idea guy.  The others involved in Gale Products were idea guys but also successful businessmen.  If an automobile designer for Henry Ford came up with an idea for a vehicle with 8 wheels (four on top in case of a rollover), my guess is that the designer, like Mr. Satzinger, would lose his job.  Not all innovation is an improvement.

The castings of the Triple-Rail appear to have often been less than perfect.  It is time consuming to straighten things up to make them presentable.  And even then the center rail was often crooked, warped, and blemished.  In fact, calling it a "center" rail isn't generally accurate.  Adding three white dots was more time consuming than simply stamping the piece.  Putting on the lay was more complicated because of the center rail.  Finishing two chambers more than doubled the work involved.  And then after all the additional work, the piece performed best, and maybe performed at all, if the third rail was cut back so as not to interfere with the reed.  

Now say you are the CFO of Rico Products, a young, flourishing, expanding business venture in 1948.  You have several existing lines of mouthpieces (the M.C. Gregory, the Roy Maier, the Jimmy Simpson, etc.) that are successfully selling at a premium over your competitors (like Otto Link).  You begin another mouthpiece enterprise (Gale Products, Inc.) and your new associate designs a truly unique mouthpiece that costs more to mold, has many quality control issues, and requires at least twice as much finish work plus some additional machining to apply three white dots.  Then, the kicker is that the groovy Triple-Rail design feature doesn't do anything and, in fact, has to be partially removed in order for the mouthpiece to perform properly.  I doubt that Satzinger was able to convince the experienced principals of Rico Products that a mouthpiece looking cool was better than sounding cool.  And so Gale Products folded after a year.  Other unrelated parties re-used the Gale name later, and maybe even the molds, but the Triple-Rail concept was never used again.  I now know there are good reasons for that.

Monday, November 9, 2020

Grandma's lutefisk sauce

 This is really the only sauce that I've ever had on lutefisk.  I don't have a refined recipe for sauce for two reasons.  First, I was quite young when I watched Grandma.  I had been dropped off at her house while my parents went about some other business where my presence wasn't needed (Holiday party, Christmas shopping, etc.)  I remember that she found out that she didn't have enough butter so it was off to the grocery store just for butter.   Butter is one of the main ingredients.



The other reason that I don't have a written recipe is that Grandma didn't usually use written recipes, and when she did, they were not for sharing.  She once told me that when people asked her for her recipes, she usually left out one special ingredient.  "Why would you give the competition your secrets?"  She would only trade.  Every holiday season she would trade her pecan divinity for the neighbor's pickled salmon.  Neither would exchange their recipes.  Now, unfortunately, both recipes are lost.  I remember how sad it was seeing a big plate of divinity go out the back door, but that was all forgotten when she came back with a quart of pickled salmon.

Back to our lutefisk sauce.  As with the lutefisk recipe, the amount of ingredients for the sauce depends on the amount of lutefisk.  Generally, here is how it works. The sauce is a basic roux.  Grandma would start with 2 sticks of butter and a pound of flour, but that was to prepare enough for lots of people stopping by over course of the evening.  For our purposes, we will start with 1/2 cube of butter.  Melt it in a pan turned on medium.  When it starts to bubble, add 3 tablespoons of flour (Wondra flour is best).  Cook that a bit to make a loose roux, but make sure that you cook it long enough (about 5 minutes) to remove the flour flavor from the flour.  Don't be afraid to brown the flour a little bit, in fact, that is good.  But when that happens, toss in two tablespoons of ground allspice and a 1/8 teaspoon of very finely ground white pepper.  Stir it in and remove from the heat.



Grandma always said that the freshness of the spices is one of the cooking secrets that people ignore.  Every year just before the holidays she would throw out the "old" spices and buy new ones (at least all of her "holiday" spices).  For pepper, she liked white pepper for the lutefisk sauce.  Now, back to our story.

You have now made a roux with allspice as part of the thickening agent.  Yes, that is a lot of allspice.  This spice is generally used as just one of many (like in pumpkin pie or Swedish meatballs, where it is also mixed with cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, etc.)  But just plain allspice, and lots of it, really can carry its weight as a substitute for mixture of all those other spices.  And there isn't any chance of too much cloves, nutmeg, etc. because there isn't any.  Even the little zing from the white pepper is masked by the allspice.

Allspice is a "new world" spice, probably first encountered by Europeans when Columbus landed in the West Indies.  It is one of the main spices for Jamaican jerk recipes.  The other holiday spices mentioned above are mostly from Asia and were around Europe for centuries before allspice.  What does that mean to us?  Well, for centuries lutefisk was certainly not eaten with a sauce made from allspice.  Combining allspice with lutefisk is relatively nuevo cuisine.  Grandma's sauce would be considered a new-fangled recipe to a lutefisk historian or professor of lutefiskology.

Now back to the sticky mess in the pan.  We have taken it off the heat and let it cool down a little.  We have a choice now of adding whole milk, half and half, or cream.  I personally think that cream makes the sauce too rich.  Whole milk is enough for me.  Add 3/4 cup of milk and stir it into the roux.  Mix it up good.  You don't have to get all the little lumps out.  Put it back on low heat and keep stirring.  When all the lumps are gone, you can turn the heat up. 

The finished sauce.  This stove is a dual wood/electric.  You can see the electric coil glowing red hot under the pot of water on the right.  That is to heat up the lutefisk. 

It will soon start to thicken.  Keep the milk handy and if it gets too thick you can add a couple of tablespoons.  Don't be afraid to make it quite thick.  The boiled lutefisk tends to hold some water.  If the sauce is too loose, the moisture from the lutefisk will water down the sauce and make it too runny.  Better to have it quite thick, almost like a paste, in my opinion.

There isn't any reason to add salt as Grandma always used salted butter.  There was a salt shaker on the table for those who thought more salt was an improvement.  As the sauce sits around over the afternoon and evening (if a large batch is made), when uncles and cousins showed up a touch of milk and a re-heat was all that necessary.  The lutefisk goes in the boiling water, the sauce is heated up, and in 10 minutes the guests were treated to the finest of Scandinavian cuisine.


For how to get your tørrfisk to this stage, you can read the blog on how to prepare lutefisk.

Yes, the color of the sauce is weird.  Like lutefisk itself, it probably isn't for those who whine about not having ice cubes for their soda pop or having to eat whole wheat bread.  On the plus side, those people can go watch TV in the other room while the adults enjoy their lutefisk in the company of the enlightened.


Yes, there are bones in it.  Another reason for some to whimper about lutefisk.  But the bones are why lutefisk is the original "finger slikar got."

I've made myself hungry again.


Feel free to leave additional recipes for lutefisk preparation or sauces.

Sunday, November 8, 2020

Making Lutefisk for the Holidays

 Well now that the election is over, it is time to celebrate.  The holidays are coming and there is one thing that saxophone players all agree on, it is that lutefisk is required for fete and frolic.  Well, they may not all agree, but it is universal at my house.  My Grandma Olsen was Swedish.  She convinced all of her grandchildren that they were Swedish ("Eat this, you'll like it.  It's Swedish like you.")  I was probably in college when I finally figured out that I'm more English than Swedish.  But by then it was too late.  No way would I eat something made with kidneys.  But a fish that was caught on the other side of the world, dried out three years ago, soaked in lye, boiled and then smothered with butter?  Sign me up.

The town I grew up in had enough Scandinavians that it was possible to get tørrfisk, the whole dried cod that forms the basis of lutefisk.  When the local fishmonger told my grandfather that he wasn't selling as much anymore and it would be the last year for tørrfisk, Grandpa bought all he could afford.  Like many traditional foods (sauerkraut, turnips, potatoes), I think that they became traditional because they kept so long during the winter.  In the 1300's when it was dark and snowing outside and you were down to your last candle, you would have been glad to have a turnip to gnaw on.  Then, with the passage of time (usually decades), you would look back fondly on those glorious evenings with the family gnawing on turnips by candlelight.  But it probably started out as a Y1K survivalist food.

Tørrfisk has to be one of the champions of preserved food.  When dried, a huge cod fish takes on the size, shape, and weight of a baseball bat.  When Grandpa cornered the market on dried cod, he put about 20 fish into the rafters of the unheated outbuilding where he kept his panel truck.  The tørrfisk was up there for years, dwindling down by a piece every Thanksgiving and another at Christmas.  Maybe there would be some dust and a few bird droppings on it, but nothing that would impair the processing, as we will see in a minute.

I have had lutefisk prepared by others.  Some people complain that lutefisk is a foul, fishy, Jello-like material.  It can be.  But it is like other uncommon dishes.  Take venison, for instance.  Some complain that venison is tough and rancid with a gamey flavor.  It can be if it wasn't handled and prepared properly.  Same with lutefisk.  It is easy to mess it up.  That happened one year at Grandma's house and she was not happy.  The "failure" came up for discussion every year thereafter.

So here goes with what I learned.  Not exactly a recipe, as this isn't an exact science.  First, the ingredients:

Tørrfisk
Lye

Wasn't that simple?  I know, most recipes include the amount of ingredients.  Well, how big is your tørrfisk?  Then I can tell you how much lye.  No tørrfisk, no lye.  Hah, hah, my favorite lutefisk joke!  For the traditional DIY lye method, see the final footnote.

Another complaint I hear is "I'm not eating anything made with lye."  Then don't read the label on your olives.  Lots of foods are fully or partially processed with lye.  I shouldn't list them because even more people will whine.  But I will anyway.  Bagels, pretzels, corn chips, ice cream, ramen noodles, mandarin oranges, Coca-cola, chocolate.  That's right.  Coke and chocolate.  The two basic food groups of the anti-lutefisk forces.

Google 'tørrfisk' for a picture of what a dried cod looks like.  Getting pictures is easy.  Getting your hands on some good tørrfisk isn't so easy.  Although you can actually buy it on Amazon, the prices are a little crazy.  Trying to buy it elsewhere online isn't so easy because many vendors sell only in large quantities (50 lb. bundles like Grandpa bought).  One of the easiest purchases is to buy it already cut into pieces.  That saves you having to cut up the pieces like I do using my electric Skill saw.  Be aware that when you buy the cut up pieces on Amazon, you will get tails (worthless) and gill plates (almost worthless).  Here is what my cut up pieces look like.


That doesn't look like very much fish, but now for the magic of lye.  I should say that lye is available in several versions.  Most of us are familiar with household lye, commonly used to clean out sewer drains.  Not very appetizing.  Also, I am told, not very safe.  Household lye, like the Red Devil brand, may contain things like asbestos or traces of heavy metals, as it is not intended for consumption.  Food grade lye is sold by its chemical name, sodium hydroxide or caustic soda.  Guess which one Grandpa used?  And I lived.  Now, where was I?

First, soak your pieces in fresh water, changing the water every day.   I put it on the back porch so that it stays sort of cool.  By the third day, the pieces should have increased in size.  This is also the time when the skin can be removed.  Although not required, I find that it is worth the effort because the fish will reconstitute more evenly when placed in the lye solution.  Best is to peel from the belly to the dorsal angling from front to back.  From keelson to truck and stem to stern for you boater types.  Using a pair of pliers, it is also possible to remove some of the fins and supporting bones.

Here is the first soak.


After the three day fresh water soak, take the pieces and put them in a glass jar or glazed ceramic crock.  If you put them in an aluminum pot, the pot won't be there in the morning.  That is because we are going to soak the dried cod in a fairly powerful lye solution.  How much lye?  Well that depends on how much water you use.  Put your water in a quart at a time and then, for the last quart, add about 1/4 teaspoon of lye* per total quarts to the final water.  I use a container that holds the three pieces shown above, I add two quarts of water, and then a final quart that has three/fourth teaspoon of lye dissolved in it.  

Here is where the reputation of lutefisk being like Jello begins.  Back when this delicacy was created, you could not purchase sodium hydroxide in a plastic bottle.  You needed to create a solution of caustic soda.  Traditionally, this was done by leaching it from ashes, specifically birch wood ashes.  That process made a fairly weak lye solution.  With lye pellets, a saturated solution has a PH of 13-14, enough to dissolve the skin on your hands, i.e., chemical burns.  At lower concentrations, the solution feels slippery like soap.  In fact, it can be one of the ingredients in soap due to the process of saponification (dissolving natural skin oils).  We are looking for a milder solution even though it takes longer soaking.  

Next, we do nothing.  For about 3 days.  Maybe 4, depending on the strength of your solution.  Where you place your caustic solution will also affect how long it should soak.  Grandma put hers in the unheated room at the back door of the house.  The same place she put the crock of sauerkraut.  Probably 50 degrees Fahrenheit and an olfactory experience when coming in the back door to visit Grandma (the front door was only used for "company," i.e., not family).  I put mine in the cold cabinet on my back porch.  The temperature there depends on the weather, but probably about 50 degrees average in October and then lower through the holidays.  So it takes longer to make lutefisk for Christmas than it does for the November presidential election (which isn't always a celebration).

This picture is actually prior to adding the lye.  You can see that the skin is still on the tørrfisk and it hasn't swollen yet.

Placing it right next to the white wine is perfect.  We aren't keeping it cool because of a concern that it can go bad.  The caustic soda will kill any germs, bacteria, raccoons, etc. that might get into it.  Keeping it cool allows for a slower and more uniform reconstitution of the tørrfisk.  Warmer conditions and strong lye concentrations reconstitute the exterior and thinner areas of the fish too fast.  If reconstituting the fish at warmer temperatures, we would likely "over-constitute" some parts, giving rise to the dreaded "Jello-like" reputation of lutefisk.

After three days (under my conditions) the partially hydrated cod has again approximately doubled in size and tripled in weight.  Assuming we paid $25 per pound for the tørrfisk, we have now reduced that cost to $8 per pound.  We are saving money and making lutefisk at the same time!  

I then pour out the lye solution and replaced it with plain water.  Do that every day for three to four days.  If not soaked in fresh water sufficiently, the residual lye will be weak enough so that it won't hurt you, but it will leave a soapy taste.  People sometimes claim that lutefisk has a soapy taste, another telltale sign that the lutefisk was not properly prepared.  It takes time.  The fish will continue to get larger even as the lye is soaked out.

Here is what the final soak looks like (notice that the skin has been removed).  I had switched to plain water when the tørrfisk had doubled in size from being in the lye solution.  The fish continues to expand although it is now going through the "rinse cycle" with fresh water.  Even the spine gets larger and the lutefisk is filling the jar.  Be careful using anything with a narrow neck!  The pieces are probably 5 times the original size and 20 times the original weight.  Now we have only paid $3 per pound for "fresh" lutefisk!  Fresh lutefisk is another one of my favorite lutefisk jokes.


Even though we took all precautions to not make the Jello-like version of lutefisk, we will have some exterior and thin areas that may have been over soaked.  The fix is quite simple if that troubles you.  Douse the lutefisk with salt prior to final preparation.  Lots of salt (rock salt works fine and it's cheap).  The salt will pull a lot of moisture out of any Jello-like areas, but not penetrate to the center where the lutefisk has just the right consistency.  

You need to dry the piece off as best you can and then pour salt over it.  The picture below shows that the salt has drawn out some of the moisture after less than a minute.  After a couple of minutes, rinse it off (don't worry about it too much) and drop the piece into boiling water.  The salt will dissipate into the boiling water and won't make the lutefisk too salty.  If you leave lutefisk in the salt overnight, it can absorb enough salt to make it quite salty (you have sort of made lutefisk bacalhau and might need to soak in fresh water again.)  

Also, don't worry too much about boiling it for a long time so that it is "done."  Lutefisk has already been "cooked" by the lye solution.  Basically all you are doing is heating it up in a few minutes.  That's why I like to start with room temperature lutefisk.  Faster heating of the center avoids the lutefisk sitting too long in the hot water.  Boiling for 20 minutes is the another way to ensure that most of it will have a soggy Jello consistency.  Lutefisk may be the only Scandinavian food that isn't prepared by simmering it on the stove all afternoon and evening.  It seems that everything else, from asparagus to zucchini, is traditionally boiled for a minimum of one hour.

Covered in salt to pull out some of the moisture.

I have read of lutefisk being prepared by putting it in the oven.  The one year that Grandma tried that was the year that the lutefisk had been over-soaked.  One would think that the oven heat would dry things out and get rid of the Jello problem.  Nope, it was a disaster.  The quick "salt cure" method might work if the pieces were rinsed off, but the stove top boiling method seems best.  Besides, there would usually be a turkey, ham, or lamb roast in the oven in preparation for the second course.

So what is this consistency that we are looking/cooking for?  Properly prepared lutefisk is surprisingly like fresh fish.  That must seem odd to those people who have only had the soapy Jello-like version.  But good lutefisk flakes into pieces just like fresh cod.  Well, almost.  It does have a more rubbery consistency than fresh cod and a different flavor.  But definitely not Jello-like.  The test:  If you need a knife, it was not soaked enough.  If you need a spoon, it was soaked too much.  


This blog has taken a little longer than I thought.  And tonight I'm having lutefisk (which is what made me think about writing a blog).  Time for dinner.  I'll post another blog about the one sauce with which I am familiar.  I have heard of a mustard sauce.  Never had it.  I've had just butter poured over hot lutefisk, which is what I do when I'm lazy.  But Grandma's pepper allspice sauce is still my favorite.  I'll try to remember to link to that blog when it is written.



*  Food grade lye is usually pellets about the size of small peas.  Therefore, a level teaspoon of them isn't the same as a teaspoon of finely powdered sodium hydroxide. Probably less.  It's just another problem of trying to come up with an exact recipe.  Time, temperature, and alkalinity all play into the final result.


The really traditional method uses hardwood ashes to create lye.  I use alder ashes.  I burn nothing but alder for several weeks in the fireplace and keep the ashes.  You want the grey powdery ashes, not the chunks of charcoal that are usually mixed in.  What, you want a recipe??  Okay, here goes.  Save enough ashes to fill a 5 gallon food grade bucket.  Pour 2 quarts of water into it (to keep the ashes from sticking in the bottom of the bucket).  Add ashes, water, ashes, water, etc.  You should have added about 3 gallons of water and the ashes should have turned into a slurry.  Wait 24 hours.


Use a stainless steel sieve or spoon to remove the floating charcoal pieces.  Pour off the liquid at the top of the bucket and let that settle.  You should have half a gallon or more.  It will look like dirty grey water.  You can heat this up on the stove and let it cool (for some reason this seems to settle out the fines faster) or just let it sit for a few hours.  Don't be too concerned as the fines left in the lye solution really don't cause any problems.


What you have made is a weak lye solution (wash your hands immediately if you get it on them).  All that means is it will take another day or two longer to soak out the fish than when using a stronger lye solution.  The very fine ashes will settle and you will be able to see the progress of the fish expanding.  The weaker and slower solution tends to eliminate the Jello problem on the thinner parts of the tørrfisk.  In fact, it is possible to partially reconstitute and use it to make a wonderful semi-lutefisk chowder.


The lye water will look a little murky, but the final rinses gets rid of all that.  Does it add a subtle smoky hint to a delicious lutefisk dinner?  Try it and see.