My tuning slide is a bit stiff, there seems to be differing advice about using slide grease or not. Any thoughts?
The answer depends on whether or not the slide was designed by the maker to be lubricated or not: Some flutes are deliberately made to so that the slide fits and works properly with no lubrication added, others the opposite.
How to know? Contact the maker if they are still living. Failing that, IME if the slide is lubed in some way currently, and it fits and functions properly, then that’s how it was designed. Likewise for a properly functioning slide that is currently dry.
Of course the problem is, what about when the slide isn’t fitting or moving properly? Dry fit slides can become stuck or difficult to move when left in one position too long. Disassembling and cleaning the slide with metal polishing cloth will typically restore proper function, whereas adding lube will often cause the sticking to get worse.
OTH, a stuck slide that was meant to be lubricated, once separated, cleaned, and then reassembled without lubrication, will generally fit obviously too loosely. Keep in mind: the flute slide is a precision fit, and lubrication takes up space between the parts, so this is accounted for by the maker, as is the type of lubrication intended, which is why even switching to a different type of lubrication can cause fit and function issues.
Thanks Loren, my flute is a Chris Wilkes keyed, I’ve had it 35 years and not had a problem with the slide before. I’ll email Chris and ask his advice.
No question in my mind, Gromit. At the least sign of resistance in moving a tuning slide, clean the mating surfaces with alcohol. Isopropanol or denatured alcohol (methylated spirits in English speaking countries - oops, sorry!) on a rag will do well. The aim is to wash away the breath condensate. It’s really sticky.
The reason I recommend urgency is that the difference in time between a sticky slide and a stuck slide is not long at all. And trust me, you don’t want a stuck slide. That’s the bit where we get you to poke a rod heated on the stove up the tube to soften and free the condensate. Its a bit scary!
Once you’ve done that and it’s dried off, reassemble the slide. It should be free, but probably a bit glitchy. Not surprising, there’s no lubricant. Metals don’t like running on other metals without lubrication. Ask your car mechanic!
Now grease the slide. A spot of cork grease or any other lubricant will probably be enough. Smear it round, reassemble, rotate, slide in and out to distribute the grease.
Now the slide should feel like new.
If not happy, come back to us!
No problem, happy to help. 35 years problem free is pretty darn good! Chris is, of course, a master of his craft, and I imagine you’ve taken good care of this instrument, so it’s not surprising the slide hasn’t been an issue for so long. Chris will certainly be able to give you the best advice and you’ll be back to best possible slide function in no time.
Thanks folks!
Loren
I’m struggling with the notion that “Some flutes are deliberately made to so that the slide fits and works properly with no lubrication added, others the opposite.”
My engineering background tells me all sliding metal joints need lubrication. Without lubrication, any sliding motion promotes wear.
Indeed, you can also get “metal fretting”, where some of the molecules will migrate from one surface to the other. The preventative for which again is lubrication.
Now, I can imagine very loose slides which require not so much lubrication but something sticky to keep them from sliding about.
And I can imagine too-tight slides which, with or without lubrication, will still not slide acceptably.
But, assuming our maker has avoided either of these extremes, I can’t see it being a good idea not to have lubrication.
And I can’t see any problems with lubrication.
I am aware that it isn’t recommended to lubricate Boehm flute slides. But that is because those flutes are stored in their cases with the heads disconnected from the body. So, grease on those slides would attract dust, fibres, etc from the case. Presumably they found that to be not a good idea very early on.
But that is not the case with our flutes. They remain plugged into their barrels during storage. Which brings the problem that when too much breath condensate congeals in the mating area of a tuning slide, it forms a glue that can stick the slides together. Boehm heads don’t suffer that as they are not stored plugged in.
Which is not to say that breath condensate isn’t a problem for Boehm flutes. The problem surfaces when you find it is getting harder to plug the head in, or plug the foot on. Which is arguably better than finding as we do that it’s impossible to pull the head apart.
So let me state my understandings…
- All metals left in contact need lubrication.
- Over any significant period, breath condensate will build up in flute slides and brings risk of sticking.
- Alcohol is the best known solvent for breath condensate.
- Once a slide is cleaned, it should be lubricated.
- If a slide is still too loose or too tight, that problem should be attended to separately.
Happy to have any of those assumptions challenged! But they do fit my experience.
A potentially obvious question that I’ve always wanted to ask: why don’t ITM players simply store their flute the way a Boehm player does? Why leave them assembled? I’m assuming it’s to do with convenience, but I’ve never found it terribly difficult to reassemble a slide.
I always thought that the exposed parts of the tuning slide on the flutes I have looked kind of vulnerable, being made of fairly thin metal elements. And Terry suggested that, if they have any lubricant, they might pick up link, chewing tobacco, or whatever other stuff might be lying about in the case. I’ve never seen a Boehm flute up close so I don’t really know anything about their tuning slide construction as compared to the “Irish” flutes.
Best wishes.
Steve
I think we can learn a bit from players of brass instruments, such as trumpet, trombone, etc. It seems to be common practice there to regularly clean and lubricate their slides. Interestingly, they have a range of products of different viscosity to address the range of problems players encounter with slides that are either too tight or too loose.
In my experience, adding a thin lube to a slide always makes it move much more easily. If its too tight and difficult to move, then cleaning it and lubricating it will make it move easily. But if it is not too tight it is easy to add lube and end up with a slide that moves when you don’t want it to.
We need our slides to be (a) moveable, and (b) stable once positioned where we need them. So this is a narrow target that would seem to require a range of lubricants of varying viscosities.
I recently tried out some “Heavy Slide Lube” from Ultra-Pure, that I saw recommended by a trombone player. My goal was to try to easily address the problem of a flute with a very loose tuning slide that slipped easily and was on the brink of perhaps also leaking air. A small application of this sticky stuff immediately fixed that problem. I was quite amazed at how well it worked.
An alternative would have been to try to resize the slide. I know of some methods for doing this, but they can be difficult and risky in an already assembled instrument. I’m curious about how instrument techs typically approach this problem, other than by just ovalizing the inner a bit to get a spring fit, which doesn’t address potential for leaking. But that is a bit of a detour from where I was going.
If you tighten a slide by using a sticky lube, you need to make sure that it doesn’t ever dry or cure. Products designed specifically for this purpose won’t, but if you take some arbitrary substance, such as cork grease and beeswax, say, I think all bets are off in terms of what will happen in the long run.
Also, the stickier the substance you use, the less of a good idea it is to store your instrument with the slide exposed. This “Heavy Slide Lube” was worse than dipping your flute in a jar of honey. Almost anything sticks to it, so you have to use a very small amount, assemble the slide, and carefully clean away any excess.
For slides that have a very close fit, and yet also don’t seem to seize up, I wonder if the clearances are so tight that breath condensate doesn’t actually enter the void. A little looser and maybe condensate and bore oil etc can enter and gum it up if not cleaned regularly.
It is very difficult to hit this level of precision though, and if you did achieve it, and then the flute was stored disassembled every time, wear would likely loosen the fit over time.
So that is my current thinking on the matter. I’m curious to learn if there is a single tried and tested best practice for this.
As the saying goes, Terry: “I don’t make the news, I just report it.” I’m not making assumptions about this, I’m saying that I have been told by more than one modern maker that they have made their tuning slides to be fit and used without lubrication. I get that this goes against your sensibilities, and I understand why. That said I have owned several flutes of such design and fabrication, and I can state that all worked just fine for me.
My engineering background tells me > all > sliding metal joints need lubrication.
And yet “All” major manufacturers of band instruments produce a variety of instruments with metal on metal sliding parts that they specify should not be lubricated, including flute slides, and brass mouthpieces and receiver tubing.
Without lubrication, any sliding motion promotes wear.
I have owned and/or operated and maintained multiple bicycles, motorcycles, automobiles, airplanes, metal lathes, milling machines, etc., etc., so yes, I am well aware of this principle and we don’t disagree on that fact. Though in the use case of a simple flute slides, the pertinent question becomes how much wear occurs with a unlubricated design, over what period of time? If so little wear occurs during normal use over a 100 yr period that no practical degradation of the slide function occurs, is that a problem? Is it preferable to the trade-offs made by going with a lubricated design? That’s for each maker to decide, of course.
Indeed, you can also get “metal fretting”, where some of the molecules will migrate from one surface to the other. The preventative for which again is lubrication.
Again, I don’t disagree that this can/does occur over time. Whether or not it’s an actual problem in the use case under discussion is another matter.
Now, I can imagine > very > loose slides which require not so much lubrication but something sticky to keep them from sliding about.
And I can imagine > too-tight > slides which, with or without lubrication, will still not slide acceptably.
But, assuming our maker has avoided either of these extremes, I can’t see it being a good idea not to have lubrication.
Then you simply disagree with some makers in regards to philosophy and design approach. That’s just one area of many, where makers are likely to disagree.
And I can’t see any problems with lubrication.
I have previously stated elsewhere that prior to my time making and repairing recorders, I spent some years working at, and then managing, a musical instrument store with a rather sizable band instrument sales/rental/repair business. I saw multiple issues with lubricated slide parts there. I’ve seen many of the same issues with simple system flutes.
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Debris collects on slide lubricant causing the need for repeated, frequent cleaning and relubricating.
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Wrong type of slide lubricant used after cleaning leading to a slide that either moves too easily or not easily enough. With simple system flutes some makers seem to come up with some
sort of esoteric or locally popular lubricant concoction containing multiple ingredients not known or readily available to many customers. WTF I have run into this more than once. Fit your slides to work with commercial synthetic slide or cork grease that people can readily purchase on-line FFS. 
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Use of the wrong type of “lubricant”, which, having been on slide parts that aren’t moved over a long period of time, dries out and seizes the slide. This is separate from the breath condensate issue.
Are these major issues? Most of the time, to most people, nah, just kind of annoying to some. OTH, an overly loose slide due to not having easy access to a thick and viscous enough lubricant is a very real problem, and maybe happens more than you are aware because the commercially available tends to be relatively thin compared to what a number of simple system flutes makers seem to come up with.
I am aware that it isn’t recommended to lubricate Boehm flute slides. But that is because those flutes are stored in their cases with the heads disconnected from the body. So, grease on those slides would attract dust, fibres, etc from the case. Presumably they found that to be not a good idea very early on.
Agreed. They also found that all the assembling, tuning, and disassembling, day after day, week after week, year after year, for several decades didn’t cause enough wear to significantly impact the function of the slide parts, despite the lack of lubrication.
But that is not the case with our flutes. They remain plugged into their barrels during storage. Which brings the problem that when too much breath condensate congeals in the mating area of a tuning slide, it forms a glue that can stick the slides together. Boehm heads don’t suffer that as they are not stored plugged in.
Leaving the slide parts mated and unmoved for long periods of time can definitely cause a seized slide, lubricated or not.
Which is not to say that breath condensate isn’t a problem for Boehm flutes. The problem surfaces when you find it is getting harder to plug the head in, or plug the foot on. Which is arguably better than finding as we do that it’s impossible to pull the head apart.
What you describe occurs for one of two reasons:
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A build up of saliva and other mouth residue - food particles, sugars, etc.
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Tarnish which builds up over time to n parts that are not cleaned properly or moved often.
So let me state my understandings…
- All metals left in contact need lubrication.
“Need” is a fit for purpose definition. There are, in fact, some flutes, and a quite a lot of brass, nickel, and silver whistles out in the world at this point with dry fit slides as the maker intended. Most are functioning just fine. Some will get stuck if not moved for years, but in those cases it’s a matter of owner neglect as no slide, regardless of design, should be left unmoved for years.
- Over any significant period, breath condensate will build up in flute slides and brings risk of sticking.
We sort of agree here, but I’m not going to get into the whole breath condensate debate again. Let’s agree that substances of some sort exiting your blow hole and entering the flute can collect in your slide over time and cause problems. Fair enough?
- Alcohol is the best known solvent for breath condensate.
Not interested in discussing best solvents for undefined defined substances.
- Once a slide is cleaned, it should be lubricated.
If you feel qualified to say how every other maker’s slides should be maintained and serviced, regardless of whether or not you’ve ever spoken with them on the issue, or even handled one of their instruments….. well, that’s you’re prerogative I suppose.
- If a slide is still too loose or too tight, that problem should be attended to separately.
Fortunately, with dry fit slides you don’t have that problem: you clean the slide, reassemble, and the fit is just right, as it always was - no muss, no fuss. That’s the advantage.
Happy to have any of those assumptions challenged!
I get the sense that you assume there aren’t actually makers making this design choice, and that I am simply espousing an opinion and then dispensing advice based on that, which is not the case, so I challenge that.
Also, you seem to assume that there could be no such thing as a properly working dry fit slide that would last “long enough” without being destroyed by friction in short order. Is that correct? Or, do you simply feel any amount of metal on metal friction is unacceptable, regardless of function and durability? I can’t really tell whether you’re hung up on the ideology or practicality. The latter has already been well proven in band instruments, a number of modern whistle designs, and contemporary simple system flutes by several makers.
But they do fit my experience.
Yes, and this explains our differing viewpoints: You’ve no doubt examined and repaired many more antique flutes than I have. I expect most, or perhaps all with slides that were designed to be lubricated.
I OTH have much more experience in the band instrument world where things are no so cut and dry with regards to the “all metal on metal contact requires lubricant” mentality. I believe it’s likely that I have had occasion to have a significantly larger variety of modern simple system flutes by contemporary makers come through my hands. It also seems like I have spoken to quite a few more modern makers of both flutes and whistles, including some who make their instruments with purposely unlubricated slides.
Two differing perspectives, fair enough.
This subject has come up multiple times and always seems to deposit a bee in your bonnet Terry 
and I don’t expect I’ve convinced you of anything particular this time round either, but at least we’ve given the readers some weekend entertainment 
Cheers
Yes, they are vulnerable. When I used to do general woodwind repairs, I copped a number of heads that had been dropped or in other ways incurred physical damage.
But there’s really not much option other than to store them separately in the case. There are three pieces, the head, the body and the foot. The head and the foot taken together some to a similar length to the body, so the only way it really makes sense for storage is to store them with the head off.
I think that once they started storing them head off, they would have found the problem with lint, dust etc and so ended up with the dry slide mandate.
And because you are pulling the slide out, it’s an easy job to give it a wipe before going into the case. And mopping out the body probably gets rid of most of the moisture and breath condensate in the slide socket, which is the top of the body.
I know this comment was directed to Terry, not me, but I can report that I’ve restored around 100 or so antique flutes, and I have the impression that the majority of them have slides that probably were designed to operate dry.
The reason I say this is that they still function well dry, even after 100 years. In other words, many of them are still close fitting enough to not slip around in an unwanted way, and yet still move easily enough for repositioning once cleaned. The level of friction between the unlubricated metal surfaces is just right to allow the slide to be adjusted while also allowing it to stay in place once adjusted.
Whether this is because they used to be too tight and required lubrication, but have since worn and loosened up, I couldn’t say. But I doubt it. There seems to be quite a lot of consistency among flutes regarding the level of friction. With a lubricant such as cork grease, though, most will be too easily moved, and hence will be unstable in normal playing conditions.
Also, sometimes the cleaning necessary to address corroded surfaces means that the fit becomes looser than it was before, and this is when a heavier slide lube can be really useful. But that would then certainly preclude storing the flute with the slide separated.
Before these slides are cleaned up though there are many that are stuck to some degree and require considerable intervention (heat, etc) to free them up. Only very rarely is it simply not possible to free them, but it is not unusual to have to remove the head liner with the outer slide attached so that it can be subjected to some pretty brutal heat treatment. But in such cases the liner always needed removing anyway for proper head crack repair.
So, I think it is probably more common than not to see flutes made with slides that are precision-fit to function properly dry. For such a design it probably made sense to ask that the flute be stored with the slide intact to minimize wear that could conceivably/potentially loosen the fit.
With enough years of hindsight we might reasonably conclude that this degree of caution wasn’t really necessary, but I still think it is a reasonable precaution, especially since we can disassemble at a corked or thread-wrapped joint close by, and replace the wrapping when/if worn.
This also sounds like a justification for moving away from the French style slides that you see on wooden and ebonite Boehm style and other similar design flutes of that era, where the end of the inner part of the slide is hidden inside a surrounding socket, and hence can not easily be cleaned if dust and fluff get in there when the flute is disassembled.
The modern metal Boehm style flute is both easier to make, and easier to clean, but it also requires more friction to hold the two upper parts of the flute together, since it no longer has the surrounding socket and corked joint of the French-style slide to provide that friction.
This may be another reason why it isn’t lubed.
Just like it was easier to fit the three parts of a Boehm flute in a case, it’s easier to fit our flutes if you leave the head and barrel together. You’d need a bigger case if you separated the barrel.
But I think it also goes to the vulnerability issue. The thin metal slides are safer if not left exposed. They are not likely to get damaged if pushed together, even if dropped.
Ideally, we should probably pull our flute heads apart when cleaning out after playing, run the mop separately through the head and barrel, and wipe any moisture and breath condensate off the outside of the head slide. Then reassemble.
I’d expect that if we did that though, we would soon become aware of the need for lubrication. Scritchy! So we should also add a dab of cork grease to our after playing cleaning up job list. And rotating the slide to spread it. We would be doing daily what I recommend us to do regularly. We’re probably too lazy for that!
Paddler, I’d draw the opposite conclusion from the fact these slides are mostly still working well. I’d say they are not badly worn because they probably were lubricated during their working life. Players had to grease their corks or threads, so they always had a convenient form of lubricant available to them.
And, from our own experience, we know that if we don’t lubricate or clean them as soon as any significant resistance is noted, we can end up with a stuck slide. And in the case of a slide that has been stuck for a very long time, that can present some real challenges.
This is all a no-brainer to me. We know breath condensate is a danger. We know metals should be lubricated if in contact, especially in a moist environment. We either do the right thing - clean it off and lubricate - regularly, or at least as soon as we detect an issue, or we take the risk. You might be lucky. Many haven’t been.
Cheap insurance, I reckon!
It could have been either way in the past, but the evidence at hand today shows that using cork grease usually makes the slide move too easily on these antiques.
Also, most of the flutes that I own from modern makers seem to have had their slides fitted such that they work better dry than with cork grease. Again, with cork grease they can move too easily.
Does this mean that they were intended to be left dry? Who knows? They just came that way, and sometimes directly from the maker.
Or does it mean that cork grease is the wrong lubricant? Perhaps so, but I don’t have a full range of lubricants in various viscosities. I’m wondering if I should get a few different ones to try out actually.
I do think it is generally a good idea to lubricate, but only if you use the correct lubricant for your particular situation, so that the slide moves, but not too easily, and the lube doesn’t seize the slide in the long run, i.e., if you forget to replace it.
Another thing: How many of us Irish fluters play our flutes with the tuning slide completely closed and then put it away in the case that way? The four flutes I’ve owned always needed a little slide extension to hit A440 tuning, so the routine is to assemble the flute before playing, pull the tuning slide out a bit, play for a while, swab it out, and push the tuning slide back all the way so it fits back in the case.
That’s a regular check on how easily the slide is moving. The risk would seem to be with flutes that are stored for long periods of time without being played.
Exactly so! It is even more the case with most antique flutes. They are best in tune with themselves with substantial tuning slide extension, usually somewhere between 10 mm and 20 mm.
And playing at modern pitch standards also requires these large tuning slide extensions. But to fit in the slots in their cases the slide needs to be compressed.
So while they were being played the slide was being moved regularly. But by the time I see one for restoration it has generally been sitting unused for decades until discovered by someone cleaning out their attic or managing some deceased relative’s estate.
That is likely when the seizing of the slide occurs.
I agree that, in principle, you normally get some warning that the slide is “getting sticky”, so that’s the time to act. Not to wait until its “stuck”. I suspect it’s not a linear relationship with time though, more exponential. You go for years not really noticing the slide is getting gradually stickier. Then suddenly it’s very sticky! Time to act!
And generally, getting really stuck is probably limited to flutes that have not been played for a while. While that obviously includes flutes that are a hundred years old, it’s not limited to that. A recent old customer of mine had put her flute away about 20 years ago. Then got divorced and decided to take up the flute again! But then found she couldn’t move the slide. Fortunately it responded easily and well to a bit of heat.
We can only wonder how long into that period of storage did the slide jam. Weeks? Months? Surely not years? I imagine it was after all the moisture that accompanied the breath condensate had dried out, plus perhaps a bit of time for curing? I guess we’ll never know unless we conduct a serious study! Though my little impromptu experiment where I breathed on clean slides for a few minutes, then put them back together until the next day and found that they were definitely tighter suggests it’s not long!
An interesting thought in regard to flutes from the high pitch period (2nd half 19th century). As Paddler observes, you need to pull these out further than our modern flutes to get back down to our pitch. That means more of the inside of the outer slide is available for breath condensate to gather on. And as you close the slide to get the flute back in its case, more of the slime is probably going to find its way between the two slides, where the mischief is carried out.
And given these older slides are likely to be more worn (negative index term), or if you prefer, more smoothed (positive index term!), there’s probably more room for more slime. So maybe the combination of those factors will make such flutes more likely to suffer stickiness issues? Or can you argue that the closer fit of the modern slide makes it more susceptible to slime? Woah, more work needed…
Now, turning to the wider point of what to do about this when you start to sense the slide isn’t moving as nicely as it normally does, I wonder if the following course of action would satisfy all views?
- You notice the slide is not moving as well as it used to. You pull the slide apart while you still can.
- You wipe out the inside of the outer slide, and the outside of the inner slide, using a rag dampened with alcohol, probably meths or isopropanol*. We know that alcohols won’t bother any of the metals we are likely to encounter, so zero risk so far. And better surely to dissolve away the condensate, rather than abrading it away? You can always try abrasion next if the alcohol doesn’t do the trick.
*One site I saw suggested “hand sanitiser” for cleaning slides, but I assume from the smell and feel that that’s largely isopropanol. But if you happened to have some, why not? I’ve also seen “white vinegar” recommended but never remembered to try it. My guess is that it won’t do much on breath condensate, but might help if calcium deposits or corrosion are involved. I did wonder if a warm detergent solution applied on a rag was enough to remove the sticky stuff, but again haven’t tried it. Alcohol is just so easy!
- You reassemble the slide and try it. Three things can happen:
a) The slide works perfectly. I’d still be inclined to grease it, but perhaps you are happier to do nothing. Your flute, your choice!
b) The slide seems tight or scritchy. I’d lightly grease it. What else could you do? You’ve proven it needs something.
c) The slide is too loose. I’d tighten it, but if that makes you nervous, you can opt for one of the resin loaded greases made for the purpose of stabilising loose slides.**
** I tighten loose slides by squishing the inner slide just slightly to push it just out of round. Then when you insert the inner slide into the outer slide, it is forced back to round, but wants to return to its slightly ovoid shape. That acts as a very gentle spring holding the slide in place.
So, does that line of action satisfy everyone? Essentially clean the slide using the most likely solvent, which won’t bother any of the materials involved. Then grease if needed.