Hi, I accidentally left my english horn in my car one day in the hot sun. When I got to it, I found that it was all dried out! Is their any way to get it back to normal?

Can you describe what you mean by dried out?

When I say dried out, I mean that the wood feels more pourous and no longer lightly oily and smooth. That would be the description for the top joint. The other two joints are still good. Unfortunately, I have no reed and therefore cannot test it. Is there any way to restore it?

You meant what you said in your initial post. I thought you were referring to pad problems.

I`m far from being an expert, and get the opinion(s) of others. However, if it were my EH, I`d try rejuvinating it with almond oil. I`d start with the bell, and see what happens. First day, I`d apply it to the inside of the bell, and outside of the bell. I`d repeat every other day, for a couple of applications. If it does the job, proceed with the joints, using care not to get oil on the pads. Of course, once the oil is applied, the oil will resist other treatments.

I assume the EH is grenadilla.

Bill_D

Thanks for the advice. When I first saw the instrument, I was in a rehearsal. I started to panic and quickly had a trumpet player give me oil. (it was their valve oil, which was buttersweet oil maybe?) I applied oil to all of the joints. The bottom two turned out OK, but the first is still a little pourous.

My question is the following? Doesn`t oil seal up the instrument? And, therefore, is it bad to place it on the wood if I hope to have moisture reenter the wood? I was thinking about it and I started to question what I did.....

The wood doesn`t need oil for it to seal. Grenadilla-and I am assuming that you have an instrument made from Grenadilla is so dense that unless the horn has a crack in it the size of the Grand Canyon then a little bit of dried out looking wood is not going to destroy the horn. Invest in a humistat or use orange peels to keep the humidity level up in your case.