Happy holidays, everyone!
A quick quesition - 3 of my rings have become loose and have fallen off my flute body, due to the change in weather. What is the best way to reattach them?
Also…I’m worried - if the rings are falling off, it means that its too dry, and that the wood has shrunk, right? Several people have warned me against putting a dampit in the flute case…what do you all recommend?
Thanks!
Alex
Depends on how wide your rings are I guess - on my current flute they are quite wide, so I would wrap some (waxed) thread around the joints and plug the rings on them again. Won’t work with narrow rings though.
hmmm…it’s a Hammy - they’re pretty thin.
Hm, don’t know how wide rings on Hammy’s flute are - you could try to cut some strips of plumber’s tape to wrap them around the joints. Should work just fine…
Sounds like your humidity is too low. Are you storing it in a humidified environment, and if so, how high? I’d up the humidity 5% or so and see if the rings stick on by themselves…maybe up it 10% after a day or so if you’re seeing progress but they’re not as tight as they should be.
Then again, the best option would be to simply call Hammy and see what he says.
Eric
If the flute is too dry there is danger of cracking.
If you have a hydrometer check it. It should
be above 50–that’s safe but 60 is better still.
If you don’t have a hydrometer get a plastic
garbage bag and put the flute in it with a
damp sponge. Or find some other container,
maybe tupperware. But humidify asap. You have
nothing to lose and everything to gain by doing so.
I say this with some urgency because if the flute
is very dry, as may happen this time of year due to
heating (which dries the air), it’s in danger.
then get a hydrometer and see what’s going on.
If humidity is a problem long term, a humidifier
is a workable solution, IMO. But please don’t wait.
Anyhow you can search on humidifier, etc. Upper rt
corner, search.
Good advice there from Jim. If wherever you are is sufficiently drier than where Hammy is (and, Ireland being Ireland, there’s always a good chance!) for the rings to fall off, it means the wood around the slides is also under considerable tension. I’m not in favour of indescriminate use of dampits, but you can’t get into trouble if you use a dampit in conjunction with a small hygrometer. Make sure it is working properly though - some of them I’ve seen can be 30% out. Compare it with a known reliable unit, or even put it outside and listen for the weather report on the local news! You can usually get inside them to recalibrate them (the end of the spring is attached to a moveable plate, usually secured with a drop of fingernail polish), or just mark where it ought to be.
I’d also check with Hammy on what he’d recommend on tightening the rings. Unless he has a better plan, here’s my usual advice:
Fixing loose rings
The rings on wooden flutes are more than decorative. Those on the sockets are vital reinforcement for the thin wood. Wood can handle a lot of compressive load, but not ruptive. Rings can become loose when the wood shrinks after a spell of dry weather. There is an easy fix for loose rings. It’s called “the old handkerchief trick” …
Remove the ring, noting which way it goes on easiest, and set it aside. Take a small piece of thin cloth - a scrap of worn handkerchief is usually ideal. Don’t overdo it by using too thick a cloth as this will have the effect of narrowing the socket mouth.
Holding the joint vertical, with the offending end uppermost, put the cloth over the end. (If this is a section with a tuning slide sticking out, you’ll need to make a rough hole in the cloth to let the slide through, or just bunch it up enough)
Take up the ring, being careful to keep it the right way up and push it onto the end, pinning the cloth underneath it. It shouldn’t go on very far. Now force it on most of the way by either of the following two methods (But remember - don’t go all the way just yet!)
Tap it down equally all round with a soft faced mallet, or a piece of wood. If you use this method on the socket end of a headjoint, remove the cap from the other end of the headjoint first to prevent it being damaged. (It should just unscrew or twist off. If it won’t, use a bit of dowel to push both cork stopper and cap off. Remember to set the stopper back in the right place later!)
Press or tap the ring against something unyielding like the desktop (if you don’t mind denting the desktop!)
(Again, if this is a section with a slide sticking out, you have to work carefully around the slide.)
Whichever method, stop when there’s about 0.5 mm or 1/32" all round left to go.
Now, with a sharp razor blade or scalpel, cut away the spare cloth from around the ring. Make sure the blade cuts into the 0.5mm or 1/32" gap, so it won’t leave visible marks on the wood or leave scraps of cloth remaining. Once the scraps are neatly gone, continue to press or tap the ring completely home. Now use your razor blade again to remove the cloth covering the hole at the end of the joint.
All of this might sound a bit daunting, but it actually takes less time to do than to read about! The cloth, being resilient, will almost assuredly prevent the ring coming free again.
Terry
Several people have warned me against putting a dampit in the flute case…what do you all recommend?
Dampits are fine. You could also use citrus peels. Just replace them when they dry out, and if they get moldy, you don’t need to humidify anymore.
I’ve never tried Dampits or citrus peels, but I also never keep my flutes in their cases…
I use either tupperware with cigar store humidifier, or more famously, my wooden trunk with a half-glass of water inside.
I rarely oil my flutes nowadays.
I live in a relatively humid climate.
Despite that, one of my Hammy’s rings fell off one time too. Humidification is what worked for that… must have been the AC
M
In stringed-instrument cases, I’ve been using homemade dampits for many years. It’s a small plastic box (like nails and screws come in). Heat a nail tip and burn ten or twenty holes through it. Put a piece of damp sponge in the box, and throw it in the instrument case. Moisten about once a week in the dry months. I’ve never had a problem with this.
For the first few years that I had my Olwell flute, I noticed that every winter the ring on the bottom end of the headjoint (i.e. the one at the top of the opening for the tuning slide, not the one on the bottom of the barrel piece) became loose. It couldn’t fall off, of course, unless I separated the headjoint at the tuning slide, but it was loose and I could twirl it around. Then once the humid days of spring and summer rolled around it would become tight again. I mentioned this once when I happened to be talking with Patrick Olwell, and he told me that it was not a good thing, because after a while that cycling behavior between shrinking and swelling would result in a crack in the wood. Around that same time I met John Skelton at Swannanoa and he tipped me off to keeping the flute in a Tupperware along with something (Dampit, guitar case humidifier, orange peel, etc) to add a bit of humidity inside the container. I started doing this, and that ring has never come loose again - and it’s been about ten years now.
My point? If your rings are falling off, it’s because the flute has dried out since you got it. You need to restore moisture to the flute, but do so gradually, because it’s the drastic changes between dry and wet that end up stressing the wood enough to crack it. Using a Dampit along with the flute inside a sealed container is a good way to gradually introduce moisture back into the flute. Marathon 24-hour playing sessions or taking the flute into the steam bath with you are not. I would recommend trying this approach first (and it may take a while, depending on how dry your flute has gotten - weeks, perhaps) before putting cloth or plumbers tape or anything like that under the rings. Why? Because when the flute was new, there was nothing like that there and presumably the rings were tight at that time. If you restore the flute gradually to the level of moisture that it held at that time, the rings should get tight again on their own, and then by maintaining the flute at roughly that level of moisture the rings should stay tight. If you introduce something between the wood and the ring in order to tighten it, then stress will develop in the wood if it ever does become fully moist again, like when you embark on a 24-hour session marathon sometime. Now it is true that this would be compression stress rather than tensile stress, but stress is stress. You want to avoid rapid changes in the stress your flute’s wood experiences, and one way to do this is to avoid really high compressive stresses that will end up dissipating down to zero if the flute dries out again. Without the extra material under the ring, the compressive stresses will not get as high, which is good.
Now, if you try this gradual re-humidification approach for several weeks and the rings still don’t get tight again, then it would probably be okay to go ahead and do what Terry advocates and introduce a bit of cloth under the rings to tighten them. And whichever approach you do end up using, be sure to adopt a humidification regimen if you live in a land where nature does not automatically provide one (as it does in Ireland).
That’s exactly what Hammy told me to do when the rings fell off mine. 
(I think he specified a silk handkerchief, FWIW)
(Also FWIW, the flute got much happier when I upped its humidity to about 60%; now we hang at around 55% because of the boxwood flutes and that seems to work OK for all current residents of the Rubbermaid Flute Tote, especially if they’re played regularly)
Thanks, Terry!
Thanks for this great advice…unfortunately, my flute cracked over night…yikes. I’m so upset. They must really be cranking the heat in my NYC apt. Ugh…now what??? It’s pretty long, up the side of my lined headjoint…I can’t even look at it - it makes me sick to my stomach.
…and my shakuhachi cracked…
I hate this city.
Oh, jeez, I’m sorry!! Now that you mention it, NYC was my beloved Murray’s downfall, though that was probably my own stupid fault.
Anyway, FWIW, lots of good qualified repairers can fix that crack, especially since you’ve got a lined head. Some people think you should let a crack “settle” first, so it might be worth checking with Hammy on that one … but there are a number of excellent wooden flute repairers here in the States; plus some makers will take on repair jobs of other models.
Best of all, your local woodwind (i.e., oboe, clarinet, bassoon, etc.) repairer can probaby do a nice job as well. Those guys are pinning cracked unlined reed instruments all the time.
So my advice would be:
Check with Hammy (email him a photo of the crack, maybe?)
If Hammy concurs that it’s fixable locally, trot it by a couple of music stores in your area and see what their repair folks think. Fortunately, you live in a place with lots of good musical instruments so therefore lots of talented and experienced repair people.
If you’re more comfortable with a flute-specific person, talented makers/restorers/repairers like John Gallagher, David Copley, Kara Lochridge, and Loren (if you’re still into it, Loren?) abound.
Sorry about your luck; that’s sad. But you’re not alone. If it helps, my cracked unlined Murray plays good as new – as will, I expect, my keyed Murray when it’s restored.
Meanwhile, get some humidity happening before the barrel or foot or 
body go!!!
Don’t blame the city. You could pretty much blame the whole country if you want to play the blame game. One of the big dangers of buying a flute from an Irish maker, or a flute that’s spent all of its life in Ireland or thereabouts, is that the wood never has the chance to go through the seasonal dry/humid cycles that are common in most of North America. Any reputable flute maker in America will season the wood used to make a flute over the course of time, letting it rest for quite some time between each episode of lathing or reaming or drilling holes or whatever. Although this does greatly lengthen the time it takes to make a flute, it is worth it because it allows the wood to adjust to its new configuration and experience a range of dry/moist conditions before it is manipulated into yet another configuration, and eventually into its final shape as a finished flute. Short of installing extremely expensive climate control chambers, flute makers in Ireland really can’t gain anything by seasoning their wood like this as they make a flute, so they don’t. Instead, they crank them out and as long as the finished flute stays in Ireland there’s no problem with that. But the stories are legion of flutes being shipped over to the US from Ireland and cracking right away as a result of being exposed all of a sudden to the dry heat of winter. If anyone is to blame in this situation, I would say it’s the Irish makers for not warning their customers of this danger and advising them to adopt a humidification regimen as soon as they get their new flute. I would think that they would be well aware of the problem by now. Of course, not all buyers will pay attention to the maker’s instruction in their excitement at having a new flute, but the makers should be offering it nonetheless.
So what do you do now? All may not be lost. Cracks can often be repaired and flutes restored to almost as good as new. I would suggest you contact a reputable flute maker in America (see Brad Hurley’s flute site for a comprehensive list) and ask them to repair your cracked headjoint. Then, once it’s fixed, adopt a strict humidification regimen and stick to it.
Amen! And it’s thanks to forums like this one that the connections are finally being made. Hopefully in the very near future makers in more damp climates or people who’ve stored antique flutes in damp climates and vice versa, etc., etc., etc. will start letting people know such things – I believe it’s because of this kind of info exchange (along with the questions it makes folks ask) that many makers are only now starting to realize there’s a problem. If the wood’s been seasoned and the flute’s been made and machined and fitted out in a humid place and then goes to a dry one … well, you can’t change evaporative laws. All you can do is work around them.
Interestingly, it seems like I see a disproportionate share of postings hear about loose rings that come from Hamilton flute owners… there are certainly plenty of other makers from Ireland/England and other high humidity climates. Anyone else notice this?
Tod
I would posit that the reason for this is not some inherent problem with Hammy’s flutes, but rather just that more of his flutes are being played in the US than are flutes made by other Irish/English makers. Hammy’s flutes are both good and fairly easy to obtain, whereas other Irish/English makers of good flutes (Wilkes, Murray and the like) have long waiting lists, so not all that many people on this side of the pond have one of their flutes. I do believe it is an immutable law of nature that if you don’t have a flute, your flute cannot crack.
The only other Irish maker I know of who puts out a good flute and who doesn’t have a long waiting list is Eamonn Cotter. But for some reason his flutes have not caught on to much of an extent over here. I have one, though, and have kept it humidified since I got it in 1998, with no problems. A friend of mine had one but didn’t keep it humidified, and it cracked.
You’re right - I’m not really blaming the city - besides, I love NYC. I’m fairly new to the wooden flute world (this is my first winter), and although I was using a cheap humidifier, it obviously wasn’t enough to counteract the uncontrolable heat system in an already pretty dry environment. I also didn’t really believe that flutes crack, which sounds pretty stupid, but if you’ve never had any experience with it…you know. I am now a believer, to say the least! I just ran out and dropped a fat wad of cash on a good humidifier…so, live and learn, I guess! As stupid as I feel , this does happen fairly often, right…?