It’s been ages since I’ve posted here, but I’m hoping someone here can give me some advice on a flute I recently bought. Over the weekend, I visited Hot Springs, Arkansas, and browsed a few antique shops. At one of them, I chanced upon an old eight key flute. The owner of the shop claimed it’s from the 18th or 19th century, but I can’t say whether or not that has any merit. It was marked at 150 dollars, but I worked him down to 100 and bought it after looking it over for a bit. It seems to mostly be in fairly good condition, except for two things:
A crack in the tuning slider. It’s fairly large crack, but the inside of the slider is brass, so unless I’m vastly mistaken (which is quite possible), it shouldn’t be a huge problem. Here’s a picture:
One broken key. The spring mechanism is missing, and the part you would actually finger is broken off and gone. Presumably this would need to be totally replaced:
Other than these two issues, all it seems to need is a cleaning, new pads, and new hemp on the joints. I looked around for any sort of mark denoting its maker, but there’s nothing on the outside. The wood is quite dark, but I couldn’t say what kind it actually is. The joints are threaded rather than cork or bare wood, so that seems like a good sign. I’m hoping I got a ridiculously good deal and not some cheap piece of junk, but if not, it was only a hundred bucks, so I haven’t gambled away my life’s savings or anything. Anyway, here are a few more pictures I have:
What kind of hemp would you use on a flute? Could I use the same waxed yellow hemp I use on my Highland bagpipes? I must admit that the only previous Irish flute I’ve owned is a Delrin Forbes, so I have no idea how to proceed with this one.
Looking forward to hearing any feedback ya’ll might have!
EDIT-- I say “Irish(?)” in the post topic because I don’t know if there’s any sort of difference between an “Irish” flute with eight keys, and, say, a flute that might have been used by Classical period composers, and so I couldn’t say whether this is one or the other.
Yes, the keys appear to be French. The profile of the keycups, the distance the key arms cross the keycups, the inset metal key-guides all speak to French origin. All this in addition to the G# lever. Can you tell if the springs are attached with small screws? Is the head fully lined?
And finally can you give us a sounding length?
The darkness of the wood and with no apparent markings this may have been a French made flute for export. It may be cocus (or what the French called Palisander). Tell us what you see.
Not sure if they’re really “screws;” they honestly look a bit more like rivets or something. But maybe that’s what you mean; I’m no expert in the parlance instrument making. Here’s a closeup, anyway:
It looks like there’s brass all throughout the head, but it’s difficult to tell; it’s pretty dirty in there.
The sounding length is about an inch short of two feet, with the tuning slide fully collapsed. Picture:
It did also come with a box, which has an indentation in the top where it looks like a logo or something might have been located:
It appears from your second set of pictures that the sockets are metal reinforced. Do the tenons have small metal caps as well? This was an extremely well made flute.
A little more precision on the SL would help, but I believe you have stolen, er bought, an extremely nice flute which should sit close to A=440 Hz with a small extension of the tuning slide. . .unless you blow exceedingly flat. Extremely Bon Marche!
The tuning barrel should be addressed and if it was made by French craftsmen, as opposed to Americans using imported French Appointments, may present a small challenge, but nothing that can’t be overcome. The French loved flaring the inner liner of the tuning liner at both ends to make an extremely stable connection.
That’s awesome news! I can’t seem to find a tape measure right now, but if I find one, I’ll let you know the exact sounding length.
So the next question is, where do I go from here? Could the pads be replaced by anyone who works on Boehm flutes? And what about the broken key? I presume it would be different than a Boehm key.
You won’t know the value of this flute until you play it. It may be worth five times what you paid for it. . .possibly more. Hiring a modern technician may be prohibitive. The pads can be cheaply and easily replaced with closed cell foam sheet punched out to the appropriate size. A more expensive route is to use modern clarinet pads.
First things first. Check the head cork. It should be airtight to a ‘suck test’. I have reservations about the tuning slide in it’s current state but could be staunched up with tape for a test. Block all the key holes with wax or blu tac. Re-wrap the tenons with hemp. You should now have a keyless flute for testing purposes. Check each section with a ‘suck test’. Go slowly playing (if you can sound it!) since you are re-hydrating the flute.
This will be a fist-full of work by itself. Then get back to us.
Oiling is a total can of worms.
I would postpone oiling until after at least a partial restoration to not interfere with any glues you might use. Treat the flute like a freshly produced flute. . .play limited periods of time until you feel it is thoroughly hydrated. Ideally precision tools and a digital scale will tell you when it appears to have arrived at a more or less static hydration. Barring that, caution and patience.
Best bet for restoring would be getting a hold of someone that is used to handling antique flutes. PM me and I can give you the name and email address of someone that does wonderful work and at a reasonable price. Just had him do my Firth Hall and Pond.
None at all if you substitute ‘Romantic’ for ‘Classical’ there. The so-called ‘Irish flute’ is basically a nineteenth century, simple system model (which this is), though modern makers building for the trad market may also optimise their designs for the expected usage as well as offering variants with fewer or no keys.
Been working at getting the old hemp off; unfortunately, it’s so old that it seems almost as hard as the wood itself. Any tips on getting the stuff off?
I carefully score it with a craft knife then work the hemp off the tenon. Don’t cut to deep, so as to to score the trough, but just enough to cut through the upper layer.
Yes. Some of these French Flutes can be very nice and strong players. Have a little caution about how long you play it at any one time. Some condensation is fine. Wet, not so much. If it is Cocus it will, over time, take up a surprising amount of moisture. You don’t want to make any cracks appreciably worse. Some cracks are ‘wind shake’ cracks and can be closed and quite stable. Others will require some action.
I would suggest using a bright light (L.E.D flashlights are good) as a sidelight and a glass (I use a 4X magnifying binocular) to look for any stamps or makers marks. This may be quite faint, and surprisingly may become more prominent as the flute hydrates.
Got some blu tack and plugged up the key holes, and taped up a couple of cracks. The low D was a bit tough to sound, but other than that, it’s playing pretty nicely. One of the sections still seems to be losing a bit of air, but I can’t seem to get it any better than it is. I’ve emailed a guy in Houston, named Larry Mallette, who I’ve been told works on flutes like this. To be totally honest, as I’m pretty inexperienced with flutes in general, I don’t feel all that confident doing much more with this than I already have; I have no idea how I would go about replacing pads, much less dealing with the cracks. I’ve got a few friends in Houston, so if Mr. Mallette is amenable to working on it, I may take a road trip down there in a few weeks to see my friends and give him the flute to work on.
I play an old French 8 key like that, it had copper sockets which had caused it to crack all to hell, a major repair job. The sockets all had to be removed to get all the verdigris off - this is toxic green corrosion like you see on old statues, you don’t want that in the bore of a wind instrument, to point out the obvious.
My flute plays itself, though, so worth it in the end.
