Polishing a Vintage Hard Rubber Mouthpiece

I've seen a lot of posts on various saxophone websites about how to clean up an old oxidized hard rubber mouthpiece.  Hard rubber, if left in the sun or put under hot water, can quickly oxidized and leave a dull finish.  Sometimes leaving a ligature on the piece and leaving it out in daylight can "print" the shape of the ligature on to the mouthpiece.  Just look at "vintage hard rubber mouthpieces" on Ebay and you can see what I mean.

The oxidation is often accompanied by a sulfur smell.  The smell can be removed without cleaning up the mouthpiece, but I'm going to do both.  I know that I can polish for hours with a commercial polish like Simichrome or Flitz to remove the oxidized layer, but that is extremely slow.  It is also possible to start with something like 1500 grit wet/dry sandpaper (using water) and quickly remove the oxidized layer, but that seems too aggressive.  

I decided to try inexpensive fingernail polishing and buffing blocks used by manicurists.  Type in something like "nail polishing block" on Ebay and you will see what I mean.  They tend to have 4 sides with different grades of "sand paper" (it isn't really sand paper, it's way less aggressive).  They are about $1 each and one can do several mouthpieces.

I first tried it just on the beak to see how aggressive the roughest (#1) side was.

I used water here because I was concerned that the little sanding block would load up with ebonite.  Turns out that it works better without water.

You can see there is some brown residue on the block and the mouthpiece.  It seemed to be working.

 I continued to work through the rest of the abrasive levels and finished with #4.  Above is a picture where the polisher was only used in front of the ligature lines, so you can see how bad this mouthpiece was oxidized.  I can't reface a mouthpiece and have it look like that.

 Now I'm getting close.

I couldn't get the block in to the spot right in front of the bulb on the shank.  I'll have to use a string there.  But overall it worked just fine.  I still think that finishing with Simichrome will really get this to shine like new.  And, the sulfur smell is gone.  

After going through all of this with the fingernail polisher, I took out my old bottle of Brasso.  Yes, the bottle says that it is for brass, copper, stainless, aluminum, etc.  All metals.  How does it work on ebonite?  Very, very good.  It contains ammonia (so don't drink it) and a very mild abrasive.  The label says to avoid contact with skin and to wash it off of your hands if you get it on yourself.  That being said, I've never had any reaction to it.  You will see it quickly remove the brown oxidized ebonite, which will stain the polishing clothe (to the point that it can't be washed out).  So use a rag.  And wash off the mouthpiece before using it (quick rinse in cold water and dry it off).  It will not remove scratches, only the brown oxidized layer.

To keep it shiny, and prevent it from oxidizing again, I recommend wax.  There are lots of food grade waxes, like the black wax used on some cheese (although you might get a funky smell again).  I prefer to rub it down with plain old wax paper.  It is definitely food grade, but getting harder to find.

After all of this experimentation, I tried Brasso polishing compound.  It appears to be a mixture of kerosene and clay.  While it isn't anything that you would want to put in your mouth, it sure works.  Just make sure to wipe it clean when you are done polishing.  I've tried washing with cold soapy water after polishing a mouthpiece and even that can make a dull finish reappear.  Now I wipe really good and then use black food grade wax to seal it.

Removing a tooth gouge from a hard rubber mouthpiece

Just a short blog on tooth gouges.  They are quite common on older student pieces.  Children, like kittens, have sharp teeth.  Sometimes it ruins the piece.  More often, it just looks bad.  If the mouthpiece is a good vintage blank, and many of them are, we need to get rid of the gouges as part of the refacing project.

Here is a fairly common vintage mouthpiece that is often sold on Ebay as a "Meyer blank."  It isn't, but making that claim drives the prices up.  Not that this is a bad blank, but it only looks identical to a Meyer on the exterior.  The chamber is slightly different.  Maybe better?  Don't tell a Meyer fan that.

It cost me $13.  Anyway . . .

You can see the teeth marks left by the young weasel, I mean, student.  Below is a better look once I have roughed up the beak with a file.

There are a couple of things to watch for in this process.  First, make sure that you have enough thickness to work with.  I could tell from the first picture (and the picture on Ebay), that the gouge was cosmetic.  It is possible to measure the beak thickness at the gouge with an outside caliper if you are in doubt.  Just put one leg tip in the hole and the other inside the chamber.  Chances are you will have more than 2 mm, which is plenty of thickness to rework the beak.

The second thing to watch for is the thickness of the tip right at the tip rail.  I intend to open up the tip a little as part of the refacing and I will need that thickness.  So what I am doing is making a little bit of a "duck bill" shape to the beak.  If I use a flat file, it will likely reduce the tip thickness.  I have to use a half-round file and make sure to stop my strokes before I get to the tip.  I won't end up with a uniform slope, like a door stop, but it doesn't matter.  Some vintage pieces have a scoop shaped beak and it doesn't matter.  In fact, it can be an improvement.

You can see my half-round file (actually, a rasp) with ebonite in the teeth.  The depth of the rasp scratches are about the same as the remaining tooth marks, so it's time to switch to a finer file.  As I remove the rasp marks, I will take it down to the depth of the gouge, and that is all I need.  I don't need to rasp until the tooth gouge is completely gone and then change to less aggressive filing.

I have now moved to 400 grit paper.  If you look closely (click on the picture), you can still see a tiny spot remaining from the deeper of the two gouges.  That will disappear when I move on to 600 and 1500 grit paper.  Then it is polished and the beak is as good as new.  Maybe even better.

Besides cosmetics, there is another good reason to remove tooth gouges.  The depth of the gouge shown in the original picture tells us where the prior owner was "locked in" to a playing position.  That isn't likely to be the position that we want to be "locked into."  In fact, the original player probably didn't want to be locked in to that position.  If the player decided to take in more or less mouthpiece, either because of improving his embouchure or just temporarily for a certain sound, he will find that the gouges will take him back to the original position.

Getting rid of gouges can be more than cosmetic.