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Well its not about a shakuhachi but its kinda similar, a root-end Tungso bought in Korea.
(But the question is Shakuhachi related just the same...)
It has some small holes in its root section, i thought the bugs are gone but just noticed some new bamboo powder inside the bore end, and some new tiny hole inside the bore...they gone right through the urushi...
So my question is how to get rid of them? (kill them)
I read somthing while searching for an answer saying that freezing is a solution.
Should i put it in the fridge? will it not crack the bamboo? In a plastic bag?
Thanks
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Well that would be intresting...but i really need help those worms are eating my flute! and im clueless...
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there was more bamboo dust inside the bore, and since my whole room is made of wood i had to take action before they infest my room (hopefully they didn't already), packed the flute in a nylon packing sheet, and then more nylon plastic bags and put it into the freezer..guess ill let it stay there for a while. hopefully it will not come out in pieces...
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I had a similar problem with some reed basket bought in South Africa. I bought a very strong insecticide, sprayed the whole thing thoroughly, then wrapped it all in a plastic bag for a week. I had to repeat this several times, as it didn't kill the eggs. Do this once a week for a month and that should solve the problem, but make sure to wash the flute thoroughly and let it air out before playing it!
Toby
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Consider soaking with turpentine so it penetrates the holes.
Kel.
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Karmajampa wrote:
Consider soaking with turpentine so it penetrates the holes.
Kel.
Gee, a turpentine-soaked shakuhachi...what a lovely thought.
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Yes, well......don't mention this to my AA group !
Kel.
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I must note that the flute come out ok from freezing with no cracking and what soever and it seems for now that all the bugs are dead, no more bamboo dust inside the bore (phew...).
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I put my infested flutes in a thick plastic bag with plenty of moth balls in it and seal it shut for 2-3 weeks. The instruction on the box will tell how many balls are needed for the volume needed and I doubled the dosage. That should be enough to take care of most the bugs and eggs as it smelled quite obnoxious even to human. The balls will get smaller and smaller and disappear all together when it evaporated completely.
BTW, there is something different this year with the weather in Southern CA. I always suspected that there were some carpet beetles, the tiny wood boring bugs, in the house. When the weather was getting real hot this year, some of these bugs started to craw out of their home and fall down everywhere on the carpet and countertops, in the hundreds in just 2+ months during this summer. Little as knew, I later found out that they came out from everywhere, from the top ceilings and from under the carpet of the 2nd floor. They climbed up above carpet surface and over onto anything that was higher than the carpet, for example on top of a sheet of paper left on the carpet, and then collected there and died in the THOUDSANDS on just one piece of paper! That never happened before even with hotter summers in the past. And there were more dead bugs around all the wall corners and edges of everything around the rooms.
Given the numbers that were dead, it was easy to see why some of the bugs were in my flute collection. And the only reason that I even knew that they were there was that one day as I blew a shakuhachi, one bug felt off the end of the flutes onto the white carpet below. I thought that it was just a fleck of dust until I saw it crawling around.
Last edited by dt999 (2009-10-12 01:42:18)
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