I have a flute from 1840, rather like a small-holed Rudall. The pad on the Eb key isn’t sealing, and maybe it’s time for all the pads to be replaced. However the repair fellow says he doesn’t work on purse-style pads, if that’s what I’ve got.
Please tell me about purse-style pads, e.g. what are they? There’s always plenty of good karma for helping me out.
This will give you a lot of detail: http://www.mcgee-flutes.com/Purse-pads_or_Elastic-Balls.htm
Bob
Jim, sometimes I just reskin the purse pad with new leather. The wool is already formed to the hole, so it seats easly.
The jest of it, I cut a thin piece of airtight leather, then stitch around the outside, putin the stuffing and cinch it up, I will put a dab of shelac on the stitches. The trick is getting the right diameter leather disc to start with.
It just so happened that when hewas compiling the info on the elastic balls, I was restoring one of the flutes made by the author of the article, Thomas Lindsey so I disected one of his original pads and sent Terry the photo.
Hi Jim
Just checking - your flute doesn’t have the more typical recent “volcano”- style keyhole seats? More of a hemispherical depression? That’s the usual seat of a “purse-pad”, or "elastic ball, as they were actually called at the time.
I’ve made my own elastic balls, but it’s tedious work at first. But generally I’ve found you can usually get leather sax pads to work. Sax pads (in the small sizes as used on trill keys) are like fatter versions of leather clarinet pads. Typically about 4mm thick rather than 3mm. In the very small sizes you find on flutes, they are more like spheres with flattened tops and bottoms. I wonder if your repair person would be prepared to give it a go?
Thanks, gang! I need to read this all again. However given the pads are from 1840 (the info I have is that the flute was never really played until I got my fins on it), and what I’m seeing is consistent with purse pads and salt spoon keys, I shall proceed on the assumption that they are indeed purse pads. I simply don’t know whether the other pads need to be replaced. There is no difficulty using them.
However the bottom two keys (pads there, not pewter plugs) work very marginally and take lots of force to sound at all. The pads look fine, however. But I can’t imagine any serious musician would play those keys, and I took them off so that the low D would sound stronger.
Is it possible to do some work on the foot joint so that the Csharp key and the C key work easily? Or is this a lost cause? I really would like to have a fully functional eight-keyed flute.
Thanks again. All this help and info is truly appreciated.
I’d recommend sending it to Jon. He’s done lots of these and will get everything up and running as best as it can be.