Aluminum foil: the holy grail of reed cleaning?

[TahoeJoe]

Whilst beginning to clean my reeds today, my cheap brass brushes seem to wear down quite quickly and have trouble getting into the finer reed slots. I dont have steel wool on hand, but thought back to scrubbing a barbeque with aluminum foil in place of a grill brush. Lo and behold after trying it out, the aluminum foil is perfectly moldable, incredibly cheap, removes rust and grime much better than brass wire brushes, and can fit into all of the reed slots and doesn't scratch the reed block. Some sources online even say it leaves surfaces corrosion resistant with a small layer of aluminum oxide. I haven't seen anyone on here discuss this method, and I can't imagine why. Are there any downsides I am not seeing?

 

[Vladimir M.]

Hi,
that sounds very interesting. Would you have any photos of cleaning reeds this way?

 

[Snoopz]

I used aluminum foil to remove rust specks from chromium on a motorcycle I had for a time. Works especially well in an acidic environment (I used Coke light...)

 

[Ffingers]

I used aluminum foil to remove rust specks from chromium on a motorcycle I had for a time. Works especially well in an acidic environment (I used Coke light...)

I have used kitchen strength vinegar with some success doing this.

 

[dak]

I have used kitchen strength vinegar with some success doing this.

Acid is kind of a red herring: what you need is an electrolyte. I tend to wet the foil and put table salt on it. That's kind of very lightly abrasive (not unlike the foil itself) and provides for good conductivity.

The essential thing that happens is that the aluminum gets oxidized in return for other metal oxides getting reduced.

Where this works very well too is with tarnished silverware. The tarnish being silver sulfide, this is kind of a smelly affair since it releases hydrogen sulfide.

 

[dak]

Lo and behold after trying it out, the aluminum foil is perfectly moldable, incredibly cheap, removes rust and grime much better than brass wire brushes, and can fit into all of the reed slots and doesn't scratch the reed block.

Well, here is a downer: material science tells us that aluminum scratches aluminum, so "doesn't scratch the reed block" doesn't hold unless we are talking of brass reed plates. Which gets us back to brass wire brushes: I think brass is usually harder than aluminum, so the brass wire brushes should be worse on the block than the aluminum foil. I'd try to stay away from too much work on the reed gap itsel either way.

Also, the aluminum plates are likely alloys, so their hardness may differ from (comparatively soft) pure aluminum. All in all, sounds like a case for experimentation on throwaway material.

 

[KiwiSqueezer]

There are hundreds of aluminium alloys out there. It seems that there are at least two alloys used for reed plate manufacture. One is called Dural, duraluminium, duralumin, duralium, depending on territory and dyslexia. It's harder and stronger than many other Al alloys, and is said to be used for the 'better' reed plates. The more frequently used alloy is of a composition that isn't revealed (as far as I know) in the accordion literature, however, it will certainly be harder than pure Al, which would be too soft and awkward to work, for this application. Pure Al (cooking) foil should not damage either, but you can see for yourself, by testing on a non-critical part of a plate.

Us old-timers know Dural by the obsolete UK standanard 'HE 15', whereas general-purpose engineering Al alloy was probably more often HE 30 than anything else. Sorry, can't remember current international designations, except HE 30 is equivalent to 2014 in USA-standard nomenclature and HE 30 is 6082. 6061 is the Americans' 'favourite' alloy, very widely used, and behaves pretty similarly to 2014.

I'd be very wary of using an electrolyte on reeds, because of the difficulty of removing all traces of it from between the reed tongue and the plate. Steel + electrolyte + Al = electrochemical cell, and the famous 'dissimilar metal corrosion' will occur. Any dried electrolyte residue + condensation or atmospheric water can initiate corrosion.

Just a thought: Al dust + rust powder are the ingredients of the well-known (and spectacular!) thermit reaction. it's the same reaction that is suggested above. It's strongly exothermic, and was (perhaps still is) used to weld rail track 'in the field'. Temperatures reached are above the melting point of Iron! It does take a bit to initiate, so rubbing reeds with cooking foil isn't going to do anything exciting, but folk have had spectacular workshop fires when a grinding spark from grinding steel ignites a pile of mixed rust and Al powder.

 

[dak]

It does take a bit to initiate, so rubbing reeds with cooking foil isn't going to do anything exciting,

Aluminum passivates on air contact and will always be covered with a layer of aluminum oxide. Without that layer, aluminum would even react with water. I do remember a "trick" in a chemistry lesson where the teacher had a student take aluminum foil from a cigarette pack, had her apply spit to two pieces and rub them against each other. When the student said that it wasn't getting hot at all, the teacher checked the temperature with her fingers and said maybe she needed to try some more. And then things got hot and smoky.

Of course, "checking the temperature" was the trick as the teacher's fingertips had some trace of a mercury salt on them that broke down the passivation layer. Kind of important to "check" only after the spit was applied, and to wash all involved hands thoroughly afterwards.

At any rate: that passivation layer is rather effective. One can artificially thicken it: that's what anodized aluminum is about. But getting rid of it is not easily done. Rubbing is not going to do a thing.