Welcome back to the Woodwind Lab. After a 5 day weekend, we dive right back into the world of flutes. This week we look at regulation, venting and lost motion, padding, and knock-pins. It was an exciting, yet frustrating week.
Beginning with the easy stuff, we look at regulation. Unlike the clarinet, many regulated keys on the flute come with regulation screws, making it very easy to control and adjust. We must take care of regulation before looking at venting and lost motion. So after regulating everything, we corked the keys and set the venting, simultaneously removing lost motion. After repeating these procedures over and over, we move on to the more challenging stuff.
As a mini-side project, I was asked to take a quick look at a customer flute that just came in. I checked for any mechanical issues, replaced a couple of corks, cleaned and oiled the keys. This was my first experience with knock-pins. These pins hold specific keys in place on hinge rods and allow for regulation. They are tiny tapered pins that are ground very close to the keys. They are not difficult to work with, but after taking a few out I found that I had to replace one. Exciting stuff.
Towards the end of the week, we dove into padding. Padding on a flute is not like padding on a clarinet. We do not level the tone holes on a flute and the pads are not glued in (in most cases). Rather, the pads are held in place with a small screw and we will shim the back of the pad to conform to any issues in the tone hole, providing a proper seal. While this may sound pretty basic, it is not exactly the easiest thing to just pick up and go. The shims that we use are precise to the thousandths of an inch. To measure the gaps in the seal, we made an entire set of Mylar feeler-gauges. Using these gauges, we determine the size of the leak, where it is, and how we can shim it. Easier said than done.
Finally, at the end of Friday, we received our project flutes. I received a 1960 Artley student line flute, very similar to the flute that I was already practicing on, but in much worse shape. I brought it home over the weekend and did a quick inspection. Keys are bent, pads are torn, plating is missing, dents are present and hinge-tubes are full of play. There is lots of work to be done and only two weeks to do it. Having set up a work bench at home, I fear there will be many late nights spent padding in the near future.
Beginning with the easy stuff, we look at regulation. Unlike the clarinet, many regulated keys on the flute come with regulation screws, making it very easy to control and adjust. We must take care of regulation before looking at venting and lost motion. So after regulating everything, we corked the keys and set the venting, simultaneously removing lost motion. After repeating these procedures over and over, we move on to the more challenging stuff.
As a mini-side project, I was asked to take a quick look at a customer flute that just came in. I checked for any mechanical issues, replaced a couple of corks, cleaned and oiled the keys. This was my first experience with knock-pins. These pins hold specific keys in place on hinge rods and allow for regulation. They are tiny tapered pins that are ground very close to the keys. They are not difficult to work with, but after taking a few out I found that I had to replace one. Exciting stuff.
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