Some contributor who seems to be using a social security or jail number as his signature and Chas are referring to players showing an allergy to blackwood.
I have not heard of this before.
Of course there are plenty of things I have not heard of but as we know people are becoming sensitised to things unheard of a while back.
It would be of importance,not least to makers, to know if there is a problem so lip plates, say, could be fitted.
If you are allergic or know of somebody who is please put your hand up.
I will note only that a nice strip of plastic packing tape,
placed just beneath the embouchure hole, is invisible, much
less expensive than a lip plate, and gives as much protection
as a lip plate–also you are less likely to be allergic
to IT. These are a little slippery initially, but soon feel
fine. Also they protect the flute from whatever
is on your lips. This can be placed so it just creases
the embouchure hole, without affecting tone.
This will soon be known as the Missouri Mod.
There used to be a programme on the telly in England called Jim’l fix it.
Perhaps the time has come for a similarly named programme in the US of A ?
But is it needed for blackwood ?
Sounds like it might be possible, although cocuswood allergies might be more likely to occur.
A quick PubMed search revealed four citations about blackwood allergies.
Going by the one available abstract, the blackwood to which they refer seems to be an Australian species. Hausen described sorting out a sensitizing agent, melacacidin, which occurs in 125 Australian and also in 3 African acacia species.
Is African flute blackwood a species of acacia?
Wood-Baker R, Markos J. Occupational asthma due to blackwood (Acacia Melanoxylon) Aust N Z J Med. 1997 Aug;27(4):452-3. No abstract available.
Hausen BM, Bruhn G, Tilsley DA. Contact allergy to Australian blackwood (Acacia melanoxylon R.Br.): isolation and identification of new hydroxyflavan sensitizers. Contact Dermatitis. 1990 Jul;23(1):33-9.
Clarke PS. Allergic reactions to blackwood (Acacia melanoxylon)
Med J Aust. 1989 Feb 20;150(4):222-3. No abstract available. Erratum in: Med J Aust 1989 Apr 3;150(7):412.
Pitt ML, Solomons K, Polakow R. Hypersensitivity among woodworkers in South Africa. S Afr Med J. 1985 Jan 12;67(2):62.
Andrew - I don’t think a blackwood allergy is all that common, but get enough folks together and you’d be amazed at what people are allergic too.
I’m allergic to nickel/german silver which many lip plates were made out of on older flutes. It doesn’t bother my fingers, but does aggravate the area beneath my chin. I’ve often wondered if I didn’t shave (and therefore expose and scrape my chin daily with a metal blade) if I’d have a problem since it doesn’t bother my fingers to have german silver keys.
Eric
It was mentioned on this forum 11 hours before you posted this, as well as dozens of times before. Check out this thread:
Rosewoods in general, and blackwood specifically, are incredibly allergenic. Cocus even more so than blackwood. There are a lot of articles in dermatology journals about rosewood/blackwood allergies, which seem to be worse for us (simple system flute) folks because our lips touch timber. Not so, obviously, with symphonic woodwinds.
African blackwood (Dalbergia melanoxylon) isn’t an acacia.
I think blackwood allergy is a lot less common than cocus allergy, but it does seem like more people lately are complaining of blackwood allergy. All allergies seem to be more frequent these days than they used to be (remember when children weren’t warned away from peanuts?).
Stuart
I am allergic to blackwood. I had been playing a blackwood whistle for a while - not very often - without any problems. One year later I got a blackwood flute and played it daily for 1 hour or more. After about 6 weeks my lower lip began to feel itchy, later it became swollen and then I got blisters. Plastic tape and nail polish did not work out well for me. After a few months I got a silver lip plate and it solved my problem completely. I never had any symptoms on my fingers.
Yes, Chas I think we all know that references to the possibility of an allergy have been made recently. There has been no information of any use at all with those references, unfortunately.
It is those references which prompted me to see what forum members experiences are.
The blackwood allergy seems to be a relatively new thing.
It seems to have been assumed in the past that Blackwood was safe.
Perhaps makers should be waking up to the possibility of sensitisation.
Are precautions taken like there would be when working cocus ?
We see plenty of lip plates on cocus flutes. Should they be fitted to African Blackwood flutes in the future ?
As I understand it, Jayhawk there is no nickel in german silver. I wonder what you can be reacting to.
I am not too sure that lip plated have ever been made with nickel in.
The surprise I have had recently is to find that a lot of stainless steel has enough nickel in it to produce allergic reactions from those sensitive to nickel ( which would seem to be a lot of people ).
Nothing is “safe”. You can get an allergy to anything.
Whether it is a new thing or not may be debatable. I think a good part of it is the internet, forums etc increasing the visibility of flute players with wood allergies. (blackwood or otherwise)
German silver contains nickel. Around 20% to 30% for the older alloys, and 18% for alloy #752 which is most common for modern flutes (65% copper, 18% nickel, 17% zinc).
It would not be a good choice for a lip plate - sterling silver looks better and works more easily as well as being less allergy-producing. Titanium might be an even better choice since it is very inert and is used for hip implants and other surgical applications.
Dave Copley
Loveland, Ohio
Sounds very dangerous !
How easy is it to buy in titanium plate suitable for lip plates ?
It would be easy to self-colour in lots of lovely colours.
Can it be worked easily to make the plate ?
Silver does look good !
I see that Heckel, because of allergy worries, are offering a Palladium based alloy for Basoon fittings instead of nickel containing german silver.
I think Terry McGee has mentioned a few times that blackwood dust doesn’t agree with him, and he takes a lot of care to keep the dust contained. All the oily woods can cause allergic reaction. I think boxwood should be safe, but Claudine’s new flute is gorgeous, with the faux-ivory lip plate.
g
Yes, it would be hard to improve on silver for appearance. The McMaster Carr catalog lists titanium plate 0.016" (0.4mm) thick, which would probably work, though something thinner would be preferable. The alloy is Ti 64 (6% aluminium, 4% vanadium) which is an aircraft alloy. I don’t know how workable it is. They want $38 for a 6" by 6" sheet.
Dave Copley
Loveland, Ohio
I have blackwood allergy. A silver (sterling) lip inset does the trick very well if you really want the sound of blackwood, and it looks good, to boot. Important note to those who are getting such things installed: clean out your case very well, and clean every nook and cranny of your flute before attempting to play it upon receipt from the maker or lip-plate installer. Shop dust is a bitch. This is first-hand experience. Several applications of rubbing alcohol to the lip inset may also be necessary to adequately leach out microscopic bits of dust hiding around in the lip plate’s surface. Try to avoid getting alcohol on the wood. Guinness and all the other recreational sorts are exempt, of course.
Peter Noy told me he hadn’t heard of blackwood allergy -just cocus- until I brought it up to him. Pat Olwell, on the other hand, has been aware of it for some time, and I seem to recall that he mentioned that maybe as many as one out of every one hundred people get sensitised to blackwood to some degeree. What I find odd is that the underlip freaks out but the fingers don’t.
African blackwood is taxonomically known as Dalbergia melanoxylon. This blackwood is related to various of the rosewoods, and those are classed as legumes (!). Don’t know if Acacia sp. falls within that category.
The keratinized layer of dried, flattened skin cells that waterproof and protect your skin like tiles, as well as the rest of the skin, is thicker on your fingers than on your face. The “tiles” are layered on top of each other to a considerable depth on the palm side of your hands and fingers (and the soles of your feet). It’s thinner on the top side and thinner still on your face, especially around your eyes and to a lesser extent around your mouth.
Your fingers are therefore protected by a thick layer of dead skin cells. If the layer is intact, it should protect your hands from the noxious elements in the wood. Your underlip area isn’t so fortunate.
Before any of you do anything to cope with allergy, you should put some super-glue around your embouchure or try it on a bit of sample wood. Johnny Gallagher put super-glue around the embouchure of my new cocobolo flute just in case someone would develop an allergy from it. It forms a thick glassy surface that feels good to the lips and eliminates any curd around the hole. Before I decided on cocobolo, Loran also said super-glue would do the trick. I have a Meyer being sent to me soon after overhaul and I am going to put super-glue around the embouchure just for the advantages other than allergies. I’ll bet that if they had super-glue in the days when they made a lot of lip plates, they would have chosen the former. I have been told that super-glue chemically reacts with the wood and makes a thin layer of polymer. I’ll get a pic on flute porn one of these days
Nelson