I was playing my flute in front of a mirror today (good for practice, not due to narcissism) when I noticed I had a crack in the back of the barrel. It starts at the headjoint end and runs about 80% down the length of the barrel. I phoned the maker who told me to put headjoint and barrel in the post and he’d replace the barrel. He doesn’t repair them, he said, it’s easier to just replace them. Fair enough, I said. So I took the flute apart to pack the headjoint etc and give the body a clean out prior to putting it away. Upon cleaning the body I noticed that there are no fewer than FOUR cracks in the upper tenon. Disaster! I phoned again and was told to send the whole lot over.
Firstly, I can’t understand how this has happened. I always lather the joints in grease, don’t leave it without swabbing or at least blowing out the condensation, and have never dropped it. The flute is 3 and a half years old and is well played in. I oil it a couple of times a year. I’m in Scotland, where the climate is pretty flute friendly - no great changes (it’s always bloody raining!).
Secondly, I have no idea how easy a repair will be, given that it has a one piece body and the tenon is badly cracked, and I have no idea how much it’ll cost. I recently took up music full-time and so don’t have pots of cash to throw at a broken flute.
Thirdly, I’m going to be recording 2 albums in the next 3 months and now I don’t have a flute to use. Triple whammy!!
I’d appreciate any helpful advice, or even a sympathetic word or two!
m.d.
Wow. Yeah, definitely sympathy. Bad luck and bad timing combined.
Any wooden instrument can crack. That’s one of the sad truths about playing wooden flutes…no matter how well the wood is aged, no matter how carefully the maker selects it or works it, there is always the real chance that there may be a flaw in the wood that the eye cannot see or that even has no visible evidence.
The only way to know such a flaw is there is by the crack that it eventually forms.
It sounds like you take reasonable care of your flute, so I really think you encountered some really bad luck.
With luck, one of the makers on the board like Terry McGee or Casey Burns will chime in with some specific info about that sort of crack repair.
Best wishes for a speedy recovering for (and of) your flute!
Commiserations indeed! Best of luck with a speedy repair, and/or with finding a loan flute (talk to your maker/repairer?) in time to acclimatise yourself to it pre-studio!
Man, that really hurts…
I wasn’t surprised about the barrel - that happens to the best flute - but the tenon cracks - it’s unlikely there were simply flaws in the wood that appeared simultaneously on two connecting/connected parts… something clearly happened between them that caused both female and male ends to split. It will be interesting to hear what your maker says, and others here that have probably seen this before…
I once opened my 12 string guitar case after being unloaded from the equipment truck to find the top caved in (the case sprang back - but not the wooden top). On another occasion the roadies dropped my hand-wired '71 Marshall amp from a loading dock… splinters and glass. While on stage performing with my Gemeinhardt, the bass player got a sudden burst of energy and decided to test his skill at dancing and playing… and in a single stumbling swift blow with the headstock of his Fender Precision, converted the flute in my hands to a pretzel on the floor. It still bears ghost lines on the headjoint from that event.
While your event doesn’t have the same catalysts - it is none the less a major disaster for a performing artist. May your flute get well soon!
Is there any possibility that someone who shares your living space may have sat on it or torqued the joint by accident?
There was a thread on the whistle page a year or so ago in which a guy was missing his favorite whistle. It turned out that his son had been playing it and it was hidden in the couch cushions. Oh, boy, that’d be a bad way to “store” a flute.
It’s no slight on the maker if I name him here. After all, the flute is 3 and a half years old so it’s obviously nothing to do with the workmanship. It’s an Eamonn Cotter 4 keyed. I’m just hoping that a) he can fix it and b) it won’t cost a packet to do so. I could probably borrow a flute for the recordings; not having it for those is the least of my worries. I’m totally foxed as to how and when it happened. I’ve played it every day since last Sunday and only noticed the barrel today. It’s very upsetting as I actually feel like I’m getting to know the instrument now.
m.d.
Just out of curiosity, what kind of wood is it made from? Shrinkage happens over time, and stresses the wood, until it cracks. Every time the wood cycles from humid to dry, the cells collapse, and the wood shrinks. Now if the wood happens to be lined with metal, where is the wood to go, but crack? That is why I like the Terry Mcgee version of tuning slides, that use a cork lapping to give some movement to the wood. The socket probably expanded, when it absorbed moisture, and I bet it has cork tenons.
Well good luck, I am sure the maker will make it “right as rain”.
A good observation, aanvil, but when I say I played it every day since sunday, I mean I didn’t play it on the saturday due to being away from home all day. I pretty much play the flute every day, being a keen practicer. Also, it’s at an age and condition now where I felt it was well played in.
Jon, it’s blackwood. The head and barrel are both fully lined. Eamonn doesn’t make unlined heads, or didn’t when I got mine. Cracked barrels are one thing, but the cracked body is a real puzzle. You’re right - it does have cork wrapped tenons. As for good luck - I ain’t had much of that lately. A trans-atlantic airline broke one of the keyblocks last August, and now this!
I think you solved your own puzzle. There’s a good chance that the force applied to your flute which broke the keyblock last august also caused the tenon and possibly the barrel crack. I used to do $60,000.+ per year of restoration work on wooden flutes and recorders, and 95% of the time, cracked socket/tenon combinations could be traced back to lateral pressure applied to the instrument. Sometimes the owner would say “yeah, I sat on it”, other times they did not (initially) recall anything that could have caused the damage, but upon throwing out some suggestions { did you drop the instrument? Did the case drop? Did anyone else put the flute together or take it apart roughly? Etc., etc.} the owner would say “Now that you mention it…”
Tenons rarely crack due to compression or “swelling”, tenons crack most often due to lateral forces or internal pressure. Internal pressure usually only happens when a flute is put on a mandrel or point centers in the shop. These two things can also apply the double whammy of internal and lateral pressure! So, unless you sent your flute to someone recently for recorking or work on the broken block etc., I’d bet the tenon and probably the socket crack occurred during the keyblock break, and you just didn’t realize it. Tenon cracks are easy to miss, particularly on blackwood instruments due to the wood color and the fact that most of the tenon is covered with thread or cork. A small barrel crack can easily go missed until change in humidity causes it to rapidly open and/or lengthen. Once a metal lined piece is cracked, it doesn’t take a radical change in humidity to make things much worse. Nor would it take much additional side pressure during assembly/disassembly to make matters worse.
Hopefully Eamonn will get you all sorted quickly. Any chance of filing an insurance claim with the airline to help with the costs?
That’s fascinating, Loren – it’s still hard to wrap my head around, but it does make sense. Thank you!
And hey emmdee, once it’s fixed and you aren’t playing around those teeny little leaks anymore, you may discover you have even more flute than you thought!
No chance whatsoever of insurance claim. I didn’t notice the broken key block for three days after the flight, by which time I was in another country entirely! That was done easily as I have a friend who’s a woodwind repairer.
Do you really think that it could happen 8 months after the original bump? Amazing! It’s going back to Eamonn this weekend. Praying to God, Allah, Buddha, and anyone else I can think of that it’ll be repairable at a price I can afford!
m.d.
Don’t you have it insured anyway? Are you an M.U. member? There’s £1k “free” instrument cover (can be increased) included with membership as well as Public Liability as a performer. Too late now, I know, but for the future… If you’re not, I’d strongly recommend joining - the annual membership fee is worth just those two insurances (or more) if you bought them on the open market! Even insuring a flute direct with British Reserve (specialist instrument insurers, part of Allianz Cornhill - and no, I have no connection save as a client) wouldn’t cost a huge annual premium. Their website has an online estimate producing feature. I have c£6.5k’s worth of assorted flutery, whistles and accessories insured with them, all risks including being left in an unattended (locked) vehicle (there’s a discount if you don’t want that) for just over £125 annual premium. It always astounds me when folk with good instruments don’t insure them, especially if they are regular performers or outright pros! I’ve never had to claim, happily, but I don’t regret the premiums for one moment, even if I sometimes struggle to find then come renewal time. (Remember, if you’re a pro you can offset them in your tax return).
The consistency is really amazing in this regard Cat: It’s a very common cause of damage (lateral pressure applied to the socket/tenon joint. We would typically get an average of 10 instruments coming in a day for repair/restoration (it’s a wonder that just 2-3 of us were able to complete 200-250 new instruments a year as well!) and of the 10 a day coming in for repair, we would see, on average 1 a week with this damage.
When I first started at the shop I’d open a box, look at the instrument with cracks in the socket and tenon (even if the socket had rings) and I’d say to the head of the shop “wow, look at this one: too much playing too fast, eh?” and he’d reply “Nope, someone either dropped it or sat on it.” Sure enough, one of us would call the owner and ask a few probing questions and “Viola!” They or someone else had either dropped the instrument, put it together roughly, sat on it, or in some other way had managed to put lateral stress on the socket/tenon joint while the flute was either already assembled, or while it was in the process of being assembled/disassembled. “Yeah, I put a bunch of extra thread/teflon tape on the thread/cork and it was then so tight I had to wiggle the parts a bit to get it together/apart”…
