The cork on my M & E just came loose and I am having a difficult time keeping it snug in the flute. How do I keep it in the flute?
Best contact the maker. Best
I assume you mean the stopper in the headjoint. Some teflon tape will help for a temporary fix. Replacing corks isn’t a big deal, usually. I’ve found that your average wine cork is perfect (cut in half as you don’t need the whole thing in there to do the job), but it all depends on the inner diameter of the headjoint, of course. Real cork can dry out and shrink (as yours may have), so a synthetic substitute might be a good idea for the future.
Boil it in a pan of water on the stove for 5 minutes. It will expand. (Watch
out its hot.) If its then too big, wait a few days for it to dry out a bit.
When you put it back in use lots of that grease or use some chapstick on
it. This works!
Lesl
I agree with Nano, I’d just find out from the maker what distance the stopper should be form the center of the embouchure and set it that way. Otherwise I would suggest you send it to me for a month or so, so I can try another flute design!! 
Cheers,
Tony
I find that they can recover their spring & size if you heat them a little .A blow torch is probably too much .
A loose cork can easily be tightened by wrapping it with masking or drafting tape and cutting off the edges with an x-acto knife. The cork will still have its compressibility, and you can make it as tight as you want. The back side of the tape will slide smoothly in the flute body.
To make a new stopper cork from a wine cork, you will need a fine tooth hobby saw. Most wine corks are smaller in diameter than the internal diameters of many larger bore flutes, so you will need to bring them up to an appropriate diameter by using the drafting tape method above. I make three flute cork stoppers from each wine cork, and I use 1/2" drafting tape to size each piece before I cut.
Once you have the cork inserted back in the flute body, you will need a wooden dowel to reset the cork. It needs to be longer than the flute body so that you can adjust the cork from both directions. Set the cork 1/2" from the edge of the embouchure for the initial intonation test. Using an electronic tuner and with all finger holes covered, play the fundamental pitch (D for most flutes). Now play the second octave and third octave notes of the fundamental pitch. If the cork it set correctly, all of those notes should be on pitch. Move the cork with the dowel until you have the cork reset in the correct postion.
The cork should be positioned one inner diameter of the headjoint back from the center of the embouchure hole.
If the cork is too loose, I’d recommend replacing it. I believe a wine bottle cork should work nicely (one without a corkscrew hole in it, of course.) Just cut off about 3/4 of an inch and it should work. If too tight, you can sand it down a bit.
Lubrication makes insertion less difficult. Cork grease or vaseline should work well enough.
–James
I have a friends from Europe who drink wine every day, and I have asked them to save me their used wine corks. However, used wine corks have been removed from the wine bottle with a cork screw, which often damanges the cork. I remedy that with the following method.
First I cut the wine cork in 1/2" pieces, using drafting tape to size the piece to the correct diameter. If the cork is initially too large, then I remove the excess cork with a rasp and sanding paddle.
I then use a butter knife to spead wood putty over the ends of each cork section. After the putty has dried, I sand the ends with a sanding paddle.
The final step is painting the ends with latex paint, which covers the wood putty and seals the ends from moisture from the breath and ambient humidity.
Since my little offering above I have come across another cork slack with age (like a few ladies I have met ) .Unlike them it responded favourably to being warmed with a match .( After cleaning the surface to reduce the risk of fires ) . It fitted very snugly after a moment’s treatment ..
[quote=“Doug_Tipple”]I have a friends from Europe who drink wine every day, and I have asked them to save me their used wine corks. However, used wine corks have been removed from the wine bottle with a cork screw, which often damanges the cork."
I really wouldnt recommend using ‘used’ corks in your flute. Especially when you can go to a home brew shop and buy a bag of finest quality new ones for a very small sum.
Doug, you seem to go to a massive amount of trouble for no reason!!!
Regarding ‘swelling’ corks with the application of a flame, this does indeed work. Try wetting it a little first and then flicking the flame over it briefly (Fred Rose suggested this to me for reclaiming a snug fit with cork tenons). This has the effect of forcing the moisture into the cork. Not too sure about boiling them for five minutes though! Sounds like a recipe for cracked flutes if you ask me (which you didn’t 
).
Mat
..oh and lubrication with cork grease (or similar) is essential to both prevent the cork from swelling too much from all that spit or if you are a bit of a slacker, from drying up and shrinking with lack of it!
Andrew and mat - I’ll have to try the flame trick sometime. And mat, have you tried that on corked tenons on a flute? Wouldn’t that loosen up the glue holding the cork on, or do you do is for such a short time it’s not a problem?
As for boiling, it works. Also, if your hot water is hot enough a nice soak for 5 minutes in hot tap water will work, too. I do let it sit out overnight when I use the hot water treatment because the cork is often then larger than it was before it shrank, but for me at least the overnight rest seems to cure that problem.
Then again, this thread is about an M&E, so no worries about cracking, eh?
Eric
I’m not 100% convinced you couldn’t force an M&E to crack if you force something way too large into its bore.
Polymer flutes won’t crack under normal circumstances, but that doesn’t qualify as “normal” to me. Let caution be your watchword.
–James
I have used it quite a few times with no ill effects, and yes you just ‘show it the flame’; try moving it backwards and forwards so as not to overheat any one part. If you are worried try it on your hand first (seriously…however I accept no responsibility for any injury caused by overzealous practice of this technique…and am quite broke so not worth the lawyers fees! 
).
Oh, and it only really works on real cork, not so hot for synthetic stuff.
Cheers,
Mat
The sort of matches I can afford to buy don’t last very long .But enough!
Isn’t the cork supposed to be a really tight fit? How do you know just
how tight but not way too large?
(when I recorked my Seery plastic flute, after it expanded with the
boiling, I waited 3 days and sanded with a nail file until it just fit
tightly when greased and pressing in with a screwing motion. I
haven’t done this on a wood flute ever. But I can’t imagine how it
would go in at all if it were way too large.)
You would be amazed (and horrified! 
) to see some of the things that folks have done to flutes. Mostly kids, but also some adults.
Usually the trouble starts when a kid either sits on a flute, or drops it, or steps on it. That’s when a smart kid (or parent) rushes the flute to the local repairman and offers to bake him cookies if he can fix it up. (Repairmen aren’t paid all that well, and they love cookies!)
Sometimes not-so-smart people try super-glue. Vise-grips. Welding (!!! 
). Duct tape. (I’m not kidding, unfortunately.) Using a glass coke bottle as a mandrel to try to reshape a bent tenon. (It happens, believe it or not.) Not all of these were kids, either.
This is why I am so firmly convinced most folks don’t have the level of maturity and good sense to be able to start as a complete beginner on a fine flute without risking the destruction of the flute in the process.
But to answer your question, I wouldn’t be surprised if Michael hasn’t had M&E flutes come back to him for repair with golf balls or steel ball bearings or what have you stuck in the bore.
I doubt you could crack a M&E with cork, but as sure as I say that, someone will manage to fit a cork the size of a dinner plate using a C-clamp and a lot of elbow grease, and it’ll either crack…or just explode.
–James
omg I had no idea!! Thanks James.
Lesl
You’re just saying this for color, right?
Loren
Well, the ones I know personally aren’t starving, but they aren’t driving new cars, either.
If you want to get rich, musical instrument repair probably isn’t your best career choice, at least from what I’ve seen.
–James
P.S. There are three places here in Texarkana that do work on woodwinds, and probably more that I don’t know about. One place has the repairmen that routinely bend keys…I avoid the pace, but there’s also a nice little store called Doug’s Horn Shop that has some good folks. There is an old fella who works in the back, he’s the Doug mentioned on the sign, and I figure he’s probably forgot more about instrument repair than I’ve ever known. He’s the fella who brought my antique flute back to life, and he did a fine job. I haven’t had time lately, but I used to like to hang around his shop when I had a minute free. He’s the only repairman in town I’d trust to work on my silver flute. He told me neat stories and I’d test-play woodwinds for him.