I BROKE MY FLUTE!!!!! AAARRRRGGGGGHHH

[mutepointe]

And to think I got all bummed when I left a homemade pvc flute in the car during a summer heatwave and it developed a curve (in the right direction no less). No worries for me no mo'.

[Jayhawk]

Terry - you were not alone in what you thought you saw at first. I keep my netbook's brightness down to save battery life, the screen was at an angle, and it looked like the the poor owner (poor as in "poor soul with a broken flute) used a steel brush on a drill to clean the bore! Brightened up, with the right angle, and it's clearly just the break.

Too funny.

Eric

[Denny]

*cough* I'd squinted at the big one when I was moving the pictures around so's I could link 'em back to here...

[Terry McGee]

My little kids (7 and 9) are playing around with the idea of learning the metal flute and it always worries me that they tend to leave it on lying on any horizontal surface, including the sofa. It's only my old Armstrong Model 90, so it wouldn't be any great loss to humankind (it comes from the pre-Cooper scale era and so would probably be happier at 435Hz than modern pitch!

I have repaired a Boehm flute that got sat on and had to be delivered outside its case. It came up surprisingly well, but what a job that was!

Terry

[LorenzoFlute]

My little kids (7 and 9) are playing around with the idea of learning the metal flute

Aaaarrrgggghhh!
Maybe you DO want somebody to sit on it

[MTGuru]

left it on the bed.... needless to say, someone came along and a butt was wrongly placed. feels like a pet just died. i feel like getting an indestructible polymer now..

To state the obvious ... If you're going to invest in a new flute or a repair of your old one, an even better investment is: a flute stand. Or set aside a surface (table, dresser) with a thick cloth or towel as a dedicated place to park your flute. And use it. Accidents will happen. But a certain degree of ritual or routine in the way you handle the instrument can go a long way toward eliminating accidental variables. Beds are for lying and chairs are for sitting, but they make lousy flute stands.

[Brazenkane]

I'm told it's far worse is when a flute gets sat on, but the flute is not laying down!!!



Then the sitter has to get repaired......!

[s1m0n]

It seems like an odd way to break. Casey, does that split follow the line of a grain run-out? What took the force along such a shallow diagonal?

[popsnorkle]

My father sat on my silver flute when I was a kid. I'd asked him to come look at something in the music and left it on the bench I'd been sitting on in front of the music stand. He came and was so focus on the music as he sat that he didn't notice it, and I watched in horror as it happened. It was fixable.

[Casey Burns]

s1mOn asked "does that split follow the line of a grain run-out? What took the force along such a shallow diagonal?"

There is always some run out on the wood these days, so probably yes. But I am not sure without examining it or duplicating this experiment. You could try this experiment, if you are really curious:

Sit your flute (preferably an original Pratten or better yet, a Boxwood Rudall with ivory rings. Any of the modern wooden flutes would do as well) down on a chair or a couch.

Have someone sit on it.

Then examine the splits at the socket to see if the grain runs out.

Casey

[Terry McGee]

Heh heh, not before I get there in time to affix some strain gauges!

Jokes aside, it does raise an interesting question. As Casey was implying, in these days of the massive circular saw, the timbers we receive often have more runout than we would engineer if we were buying it in the log and converting it ourselves. Conceivably we could buy in the log, but there we are up against quarantine - the Customs people go understandably berserak* if they see bark. Bark is where the grubs and their eggs live. Introduce the Mopane grub to the Australian environment and see how many friends you have left. Or Tsetse fly infestation to Hollywood?

But in the good old days, we are lead to believe that logs were riven, rather than milled. That should produce the least grain runout, as the froe should naturally follow the grain. I wonder if we could prove or disprove that by close examination of the grain in old flutes?

*berserak - an Australian reworking of the adjective "beserk".

Terry

[BigDavy]

Hi Terry

As against the original baresark.

David