Horror!! *SOB*

[BillG]

I glued a 16 inch long dowel into an 8 X 8 inch piece of plywood. When I'm resting or taking a break - and after oiling - I slide the flute over the dowel and let it stand for a bit. All the grunge rolls to the bottom and any escess oil goes there too. When I'm ready to play again I just reach down a bit and pull the flute off the dowell.

Try it.

BillG

[Gaaslaj]

I have the same kind of crack. For a temporary repair, I tightened a nylon cable tie around the end of the socket, and covered the crack with transparent tape. Plays well until it's repaired.

[chas]

Hmmm, it makes you wonder if we makers (or anyone else!) should supply anti-roll devices for keyless flutes.

The pic on Jack Coen's c. 2000 album shows that he has a band-type pipe clamp toward the top of the head. It would serve as an anti-roll device, plus I presume it's sealing a crack, so it would serve both purposes at hand.

[Casey Burns]

Max,

Sorry to hear about your accident. Note that I never received email about your cracked headjoint and just read about it here. Note everyone: use only my casey@caseyburnsflutes.com address. The old address (cburns@telebyte.com) has thankfully gone extinct, along with 99% of the spam I received.

Cracks like this arise from a sudden blow such as dropping the flute or allowing it to roll off a table or sitting on it while assembled - all not uncommon accidents at sessions. However, these are fairly easy to repair though the best thing is to send it to me. What would be best would be a replacement.

Otherwise my usual procedure is to let it settle a bit, glue it, and pin it with a few pins and then to wrap a few turns of button thread against the bead at the end, and entomb it permanently with more glue. Usually the socket doesn't need to be reshaped.

I think the beauty of the turned object with a little dose of common sense precludes the need for fail safe devices such as flat spots machined into the wood. Keyed flutes are less likely to roll off a table - but an astonishing amount of Boehm flute repair work results from such events. I have also heard of flute players arms going numb from fatigue and losing a grip on a favorite instrument. This has almost happened to me in long sessions of tuning and voicing in some rather non-ergonomic postures (required for undercutting with a handpiece).

There are things worse - a few of my clients have oiled their flutes, then left these on a table top within handy reach of their dogs who found them to be an ideal chew toy, usually with terminal results. For some reason the headjoint is always the part to be destroyed first, followed by the middlejoint. The dog is usually bored by the footjoint and only gnaws a few tooth marks into it. I've seen a few 18th and 19th century flutes with such trauma.

Casey

PS: Everyone please donate for the earthquake and tsunami relief!

The next time it could be the Northwest coast of the USA - we've had at least 5 or more megathrust earthquakes in the last 2500 years, with a rupture from Cape Mendocino in Northern California to Vancouver Island, a distance similar to the 1000 km rupture in Sumatra, with a similar oblique subduction scenario with plate convergence of 3-5 cm per year. The last was recently dated to Jan 26, 1700 based on Japanese tsunami records, and was estimated to be a 9.5!

[peeplj]

Excellent post by Casey Burns...you can't get better advice about a flute repair than from the man who made the thing in the first place!

Regarding Boehm flutes, they rarely roll off of anything...the thumb keys and the A-flat touch pretty much make it roll-proof. They do get frequently damaged, though, especially by school kids. In marching band, sometimes the foot joint will fall off the flute and land hard...if on grass, this usually does no damage, but if on concrete, it can be quite drastic. Flutes are left on chairs and then sat on with surprising regularity. Another pretty frequent disaster is the flute sat on the lip of a music stand which falls off.

I also knew one girl, who, upon deciding her flute was "dirty," promptly filled up her bathtub with hot water and bubble-bath, and then soaked the flute in it for a good hour. The flute, by the way, turned out to suffer no mechanical damage, but did require a repad. And I suppose it could be argued that is was quite clean.

--James

[Tom O'Farrell]

On metal Boehm system flutes many players use a thing called a thumbalino for the RH humb, it is made of a cork looking substance and fits the flute curvature, in all about 1" long and glued on, the idea is to stabilize your RH hold as on a fully keyed metal Boehm system flute there is a tendancy for the flute to roll in because of the weight of the keywork when you are playing in some keys (more than others) and this prevents this happening, I have never had the problem to any great extent and anyway I use the galway grip which pretty much gets rid of it, so I don't use one, but it has a flat surface on the underside that probably could do the job of preventing rolling off a table. Do a google on "thumbalino" and the maker should come up.
Andrews idea sounds good, and simple.

[Tipple/fipple Flutist]

Here's the solution to the rolling flute.
My husband knocked this together in just a few minutes flat.



I keep it by my chair on my coffee table within easy reach so I can play, oil and enjoy several flutes at once, even ones with keys.

He also built a similiar rack on the wall, like a pool cue holder with felt lined cups on the bottom of each flute rest so the mouthpiece doesn't get damaged and the flute can "drain". It at least works for Native american flutes.

You can probably guess the simplicity of the design, so I won't bore you wit it, but if you truly need help, I'll have Jim whip up some plans & scan them in. he doesn't do computers. He makes great flute racks though.