[Harp-L] Nail polish and bubbles

[Vern]

> On Jan 19, 2019, at 8:29 AM, bren at xxxxx wrote:
> 
> Thanks Vern. I assume you mean G3/A3 in terms of their pitches under the international note naming system? 
Yes.
> 
> You seem to have missed my earlier point that nail polish would only be used in conjunction with standard embossing, on both the blow AND the draw reed, plus optimal gapping. Thus your bubble demonstration using stock reeds and slots is not especially relevant to the discussion.

> I don’t think that the evidence seen in the picture can be dismissed quite that easily. I posit that the experiment would  have produce the same results had I started with a customized harp.  I suggest that you customize one pair of the longer reeds in a harp.  Then I, or you if you prefer,  can run the experiment again.
> 
My experiment was to illustrate the relative magnitudes of leakage near the rivet where you apply polish and near the tip where the gap is orders of magnitude larger.  

In normal playing, the opening reed (draw in my case) tip stands away from the plate by the preset gap and moves farther outward as playing pressure is applied.  Because it is nowhere near the slot, it really doesn’t matter if the slot is embossed or not.  In the picture, it can be seen that the leakage from this source is very large. It could be stopped by a valve but that would prevent 2-reed bending.

In order to see the amount of leakage that the nail polish could reduce, I filled the gap of the closing (blow) reed for 2/3  of its length near the tip.  Thus only the leakage from the gap near the rivet would exit  without being obscured by the much larger flow by the blow reed's tip.  In the picture it exits the left side of the harp and forms one tiny bubble. There is some leakage there, but it is a tiny fraction of the leakage from the opening reed.  If you believe that reducing this amount of leakage…even in both reeds, can reduce the total leakage enough to be perceptible, then we have found the crux of our disagreement.  

I posit that the leakage reduction from use of the polish is such a small part of the total that it is imperceptible.   The picture dramatically shows this huge difference of magnitudes. 

I questioned only the use of polish, not the overall efficacy of expert reed voicing.

Vern