Any tips for fixing a "dud" flute?

Irish Flute
1

So a friend of mine handed me three flutes to fix that she had gotten off of ebay (thinking it would be safe as it was supposedly from the UK, but no such luck). She got two Bb fifes, and a low D flute, all keyless, Pakistani firewood. First thing I did with them all was sand down the bore, make sure it was smooth, sand and undercut the sound hole, and oil them. The two Bb fifes came out with flying colors, working like a charm, especially after I tuned them. The D, however, is not working well at all. It’s surprisingly in-tune as far as I can tell, but getting the first octave D-G to speak is exceedingly difficult, despite my attempts at tweaking the sound hole.

So my question is, do you know of anything I can try to possibly make it work? It got better after the oiling and undercutting, but not nearly by enough. The sound hole is overly-large (at least for my taste), and the tone holes are pretty small. I don’t have the means of pulling off a full over-haul of the thing, so I’m thinking it might be a lost cause. In one of my PVC flutes that I made a while back, I noticed that rounding off the inner edge of the sound hole (on the side closest to the hands; not a side that is blown on) helped to strengthen the low notes, so I did that along with the normal undercut (an attempted copy of what I see in my Copley D), but still didn’t get much out of it. The corks in the joints and the stopper all make a very tight fit (almost too tight. I had to sand them down a bit to get them to actually go together without a lot of effort), so I’m fairly sure it’s not a leaking issue.

Any ideas?
Thanks!

2

Have you done a suck test on the headjoint? The head joint corks in those things sometimes are just wads of paper/cloth-like material…at least that’s the case on the piece of firewood I bought off of ebay 11ish years ago with the idea of fixing it up myself (I made PVC and bamboo flutes for a bit, so I thought I could fix it and get a cheap flute).

Eric

3

Common project. They now sell kits that will fix things right up. Click here.

Feadoggie

4

Its very easy. We scientists here at the National Irish Flute Testing Laboratory in Washington State show everyone what to do:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFQhO3LWtQk

Casey

5

Given the provenance, it’s a sure bet that it sucks. No test needed. :wink:

6

Touche Mr. Nanohedron, Touche! :stuck_out_tongue:

7

Yup, Casey’s got the right idea.

8

Well, figures. It was worth a try anyway! :slight_smile: And yes, the suck ( :wink: ) test checks out - no leaks.

9

Just suck.