More than once, the screws on my saxophone ligature have come apart.

Happened a few times on my Olegature.

Part of the problem may have been with me and tightening the ligature too much.

My Rovner ligature that I use now on my tenor is doing all right, but I noticed that it was becoming harder to adjust.

Read a discussion on a clarinet forum online, since I wanted to use something that wouldn’t cause more problems, and saw that the clarinet players on there were applying a bit of cork grease among other things to the mechanics of the ligature.

Metal grinding on metal tends to cause problems if there isn’t anything lubricating it.

A few clarinet players had talked to machinists they knew and were told the same thing, that probably seems fairly obvious if you’ve dealt with anything mechanical.

Your car needs oil, apparently your ligature can stand a bit of care too.

So I put a bit of cork grease on from both sides and worked it in there.

I actually rarely use the cork grease on the cork that’s on the neck, maybe since it’s a bit humid where I live.

The next time I played, the mechanism worked much smoother and I probably won’t have to worry about it again for a while.