Hi everyone,
I’m preparing to make some wooden keyless flutes, lined with metal in the head. A few steps of development beyond my SHANNON.
My question: Does it have to be sterling silver? Is brass a dealbreaker, or does brass put the flute in a lower class? Is Nickel silver any better/worse? If brass made the flute more affodable than silver, would you still buy such a flute?
Please! I’m not interested in opening the debate about lined / unlined / partially lined; we’ve had plenty of that discussion already. However, if you are a person who thinks metal lining is acceptable, or if you’ve played a good flute that came with a liner, I’d like to hear your opinion (as a prospective buyer) about the option of these different metals. Thanks.
Walt Sweet
I wouldn’t think it would make much difference, but…I had a flute with a brass liner that was markedly improved when I put a headjoint on it which had a silver liner. Unfortunately the makers were different, so it wasn’t a very good test. Chet
I don’t think it particularly matters, except for possible factors of corrosion (brass, or dissimilar metal galvanic corrosion). Not a problem as long as kept clean, and moving the slide every once in a while to prevent bonding. I think most common usage in liners/tuning slides tend to be nickel-silver or silver. I find brass to brass more commonly in whistles, & again seems OK to me.
I play a Cocus 8-key Aebi flute that I bought used, and it has a brass headjoint liner. I’ve never thought it would be better with silver. It patina’s down to a matte yellowish color seen through the embouchure hole and I’ve never had any problems with it.
I suppose if I was a completely anal-retentive individual I might want to see silver to match the other fittings on the flute – the rings and keys. But I don’t care. It sounds great, easy to care for, that’s enough for me. I’d buy another flute like this Aebi with a brass lined headjoint in a heartbeat. Or silver, I’m not convinced it makes much difference other than aesthetics.
I played an original Rudall & Rose for many years that had Sterling Silver keys, rings, and presumably headjoint lining, and also an original c1860 London-made flute with German Silver (cupro-nickel) keys, rings, and headjoint lining.
I didn’t see that it made any difference.
In general I’m a fan of German Silver which was extremely common in Victorian times, but which has (for no apparent reason) lost out to brass in modern times. Personally I’d like to see Sterling Silver or German Silver, not brass.
Has anybody tried aluminium?
I’ve played flutes with both kinds of head liners, silver and also brass. I never noticed one sounding better than the other.
That’s a question worth asking.
Might not be a good idea, according to a list of thermal coefficient of expansion found on this site: Linear Coefficient of Expansion - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics
Aluminum 25.5
Brass (typical) 18.9
Silver 18.8
The fear of every flute owner with a lined head is the wood cracking due to differential expansion of the liner. If that list is accurate, it looks like aluminum moves more than brass or silver. Since brass and silver are very close in CoE, you can easily substitute one or the other without a change in risk due to cracking.
Might also be too soft, especially when using thin walled tube as would be needed for a tuning slide. It’s quite a bit softer than brass. So could get stretched over time and the tuning slide becoming loose.
I would worry more about corrosion if aluminium was used - it is more reactive than the other two (1). Not only for aesthetics, but because (iirc) aluminium oxide is bulkier than aluminium. Oxide between the liner and the timber would increase the likelihood of cracking maybe. (Disclaimer: I am not a flute maker, and have not seen a flute with a lined head in real life)
(1) Copper and silver are below hydrogen on the electrochemical series, aluminium is well above.
You’d have to use anodized aluminium anyway but aluminium forms a natural oxidized layer on top in seconds (after cutting or filing for instance), after that, it should be pretty inert except for contact corrosion. And there’d probably be no contact corrosion between wood and aluminium. But it also does not glide very well.
As a purely emotional response as a customer, I view sterling silver as a higher quality material, more expensive, and one that I’m willing to pay more money for than yellow brass or white brass. I’ve purchased three new flutes with lined head joints. My Copley (which I still play) came standard with a sterling silver head joint and barrel lining. For my John Gallagher and Olwell, both of which I sold on, the sterling silver was an extra-cost option. When I was working with tubing, I found white brass (German silver) to be harder than sterling silver and hence more difficult to work. I would expect no difference in sound quality from sterling silver, yellow brass or white brass.
I would agree that as a customer, I view the silver as a higher quality material and I have willingly paid more for the silver slide upgrade. Sterling, is most desirable.
On the other hand, I have and play a flute with brass tubing. It plays so well for me that I don’t think about the lining being brass. I can’t perceive a difference in tone quality between brass and silver.
That’s how I feel about my Aebi with a brass liner. Nobody sees it but me anyway, through the embouchure hole.
It does make me wonder why that choice was made on what must have been an expensive flute when bought new (I bought it secondhand), because it’s a Cocus flute. That’s usually considered top shelf in recently made flutes due to the near-unobtanium wood.
If there isn’t any mechanical advantage in stiction with the slide, then maybe it was a nod to the way the 19th Century flutes were made? This flute is a pretty close Rudall copy, adjusted for modern intonation and with a newfangled stopper design. Were most Rudall and Rose flutes from around mid-Century lined with brass or silver?
I don’t remember making a study of it, but I’d assume like most flutes of the time they were nickel or possibly silver-plated brass, but with a thin-walled sleeve of sterling silver covering the bit protruding from the barrel. So when your adoring audience (or audient in these Covid-constrained days) looks at your flute, they see a nice flash of silver between head and barrel (you do keep that bit polished, don’t you?). But if they wrested the flute from you, and pulled the head out from the barrel, they’d see that all those years of tuning have worn the plating off the male slide, showing patches of the underlying brass.
That approach remains an option, Walt, for your instruments. You could use brass tubing, either plated or not, for both male and female slides. With just a short thin sleeve of silver popped onto the end of the female slide protruding from the barrel. That could be a press fit or even glued these days.
Or even just silver-plate the outside of the end of the female slide? As long as it doesn’t rub the walls of the cavity into which it hides when closed, the plating should last a pretty long time!
So far as I’m aware the vast majority of original C19th English flutes have either brass or nickel-silver liner tubes in head and barrel. They were most commonly tin-plated throughout internally and on the exterior of the protruding head tube. I’ve dealt with so many… Often the tin plating is perished and has partially bubbled up from the surface, and any heating one may have to do in removing tubes for crack repairs etc. can finish it off. The corrosion often leaves the bore rough and requiring rubbing down. There’s no easy practical way to re-tin them in restoration. As Terry says, the protruding part of the barrel liner was usually covered with a shrink-fitted silver or nickel-silver sleeve to match the rings and keys. Solid silver liner tubes were very rare. It’s never bothered those of us who play the old flutes! Solid silver tubes seems to be more of a modern maker thing.
Heh heh, and you’ve probably come across this issue too, Jem, particularly (only?) on Clementi flutes. On most barrels of the time, the decorative silver band went straight onto the protruding end of the barrel slide. Press fit or shellac perhaps, don’t know, perhaps doesn’t matter in practice. But on these particular flutes, the wood of the barrel, thinned almost to nothing, extended from the barrel covering the protruding end of the slide and was then covered in turn by an ultrathin tube of silver. A cylindrical sandwich.
Then, of course, over time, the barrel cracks due to the wood shrinking in a dryer climate, and the poor repairer has to get this sandwich apart to get the slide out and glue the crack back together before reaming or sanding the hole in the barrel large enough to re-accommodate the slide safely. What, ream or sand the inside of this feather-thin tube of wood extending from the barrel. Just done one, so it is possible. But argghhhh, what were they thinking?
My only thought is that they were reducing the thickness of the silver band to save cost. Why have solid silver when you can have a thin veneer of silver over wooden infill? The fact that they were prepared to go to that trouble probably gives us some idea of how expensive silver was at the time. Other indications are the rise of German Silver (Nickel silver) on flutes, EPNS (ElectroPlated Nickel Silver) cutlery and tableware, the military sticking with boxwood and brass (for the polishing of, by troops, Suh!), and so on. It would be interesting to track down some pricelists of the time to compare costs of solid silver with plated metals. But you’d have to make some allowance for snob value! “Now, I’m assuming Sir would not be interested in one of our cheaper popular plated lines, would he? No, I thought not. Giles, can you bring the gentleman and me a brandy each? Make sure it’s from the special cupboard, Giles.”