I have an old no-name wooden small hole eight key flute. I’ve been slowly tinkering with it, and I’ve got it so it plays pretty well in tune and all the keys work and it doesn’t leak–much. It’s a work in progress. I’ve learned a lot from it
The headliner is loose–it moves when I adjust the tuning slide. I could probably pull it out altogether if I tried.
So how do I stop that?
Some things that have occurred to me
A: wrap in teflon tape (plumber’s thread tape) and reinsert. Seems like a recipe for cracking, Hard to get right
B: glue it in
If glue is the answer what glue?
Super glue–the more viscous kind. Could be a messy disaster, but Superglue is reversible with acetone, which probably won’t hurt blackwood. Alternatively the very thin super glue and let it wick in.
Hide glue–not sure it sticks to metal
Shellac. I use shellac as a finish all the time. Mix up some shellac, brush it on, insert. or maybe even mix the shellac thin and wick in. Shellac sticks to most everything and it’s reversible with alcohol
Any suggestions? this will never be a great flute but it has a sweet tone and I’d like to get it into reliable playing shape
I have a feeling that I lose some efficiency with this flute because the liner is loose enough to move. I haven’t pulled it all the way out yet but I’m going to have to do something.
An alternative might be a slow setting epoxy–put a thin coat of epoxy on the liner and then insert it, and there would be time to adjust it before the epoxy cures. Epoxy is messy and hard to clean although mineral spirits will work, and will break the bond along with some heat. But that doesn’t sound like a fun job.
Shellac is probably the way to go even if it’s a less permanent fix
Hi PB+J,
I’ve used Gorilla glue when I’ve done it and it works well. Be aware it foams up a bit so less is more.
Others use epoxy. Years ago before I did this myself Skip Healy used epoxy on a flute of mine.
I think Shellac was what the old boys used so would work as well.
I would poke around on Facebook as most of the good chat about repair has moved there. Also search here for gluing liner etc and you will find older post from Jem and Jon C.on here.
All the best
Pat
I have no experience with loose headliners but I have used super glue extensively on (non flute) wood repairs. It works very well and would be my choice of the different options you mentioned. You can get applicators that will make a single drop at a time, so you can be very precise.
Yes I’ve done a lot of work with super glue when building guitars. The problem is the set time–it would set up too fast, I think. I want time to get the best tone by adjusting the way the liner fits around the blow hole.
I pulled the liner out. Took some doing. It had been scored with lines running its length. It had some brown paper wrapped around it at the barrel side which had been saturated in glue. There were two kinds of glue, on it and I tried removing it with Naptha, alcohol, mineral spirits and acetone. Mineral spirits seemed to work so I’m thinking one of the glues was epoxy.
The hole for the embouchure was crudely cut–really crudely, like the guy had too much wine at lunch. I will probably clean it up some, but I have no idea if that effects the tone–any thoughts?
My concern about gorilla glue would be the foaming–seems like that would add expanding pressure and make cracks more likely?
I’ve had good results using West System G-Flex epoxy. It cures slowly so that you have plenty of time
to align everything, and it retains a small amount of flexibility when cured. The most challenging task
is to keep the tuning slide portion of the head liner clean while also ensuring that you have enough
epoxy to fully fill the void between the head and liner. The best way to do the latter is to coat both
liner and the inside of the head tube. This ensures that there is enough epoxy everywhere, but this
also then leaves a lot of epoxy in the recess in the head that the outer part of the tuning slide needs to
slide into. Your friend in this situation is to coat the surfaces that need to remain clean (the recess in
the head, the inside of the head liner, and the outside part of the head liner that is in contact with the slide)
with vaseline so that the epoxy can not easily adhere to it.
You also need to make sure that the head is cleaned and sanded such that the fit of the liner is not too
tight. This not only discourages future cracking, but it also allows the epoxy to adhere better and makes
it possible to insert the liner from the south side.
The next trick is to remove any excess epoxy that ends up in the wrong place before it sets completely,
but after it has solidified enough to not stick to the insides of the head recess. This is all a bit tricky,
but with the right tools it is manageable. The main “wrong places” to worry about are inside the slide
recess, inside the head liner, outside the head liner where the slide runs, and in the embouchure.
In terms of tools, I use a piece of tubing slightly larger than the OD of the head liner, but still small enough tof
it in the head recess, that has a serrated, saw-tooth, edge cut into the end, to clean out the recess. I cut this
edge by hand with a small triangular file. I also have a thin sliver of stainless steel from a car windscreen wiper that
comes in handy for getting into that recess when necessary.
Epoxy is great stuff but has a terrible propensity to migrate into unwanted areas when dealing with small parts. Super glue comes in many different viscosities and formulations, some quite flexible. If you used a wickable packing to first fill any voids, a superglue fix would be fast and, like you said, reversible.
I’ve got the liner pretty well cleaned up. I very lightly sanded the headjoint and the liner so now it fits very easily into the headjoint.
I’m going to sleep on it. Thinking “wrap it in paper and then saturate the paper in shellac, then add more shellac and insert.” But probably that won’t hold all that well.
Super glue is great stuff and I’ve worked extensively with it in all viscocities. I’ve even used it as a pore filler on Mahogany. I just feel like I want more working time than even the thick superglue allows.
What will the result be if I enlarge the embouchure hole in the liner? right now there is really only one position where the liner isn’t visible in embouchure hole. When I play the headjoint without the liner installed, it gets a good tone. So I’m thinking of just enlarging the hole in the liner
I just made a piccolo head; the metal liner extended as a tuning slide. I made the hole thru the head oversize to allow for shrinkage. Instead of epoxy, I used Gorilla glue, which has good adhesion to metal, and it’s flexible. To cure, I used a heavy rod to push the liner toward the blowhole side (i.e., thicker glue-joint around the back, and a thinner glue-joint in the blowhole chimney).
I used shellac on the couple of antiques that I repaired. Seems to work well, and I like the easy ability to reverse the liner installation if it needs to be removed in the future (say if the head cracks from low humidity). I used a plumbers torch to heat the liner, then coated it well with hard clear shellac from a wood finishing shop. You need to install it all fairly quickly, while the shellac is still hot and liquid on the liner surface.
I cut a piece of acid-free paper I happened to have so it covered about 1/3 of the liner, and glued to to the liner using thin super glue. When it dried I cut the embouchure hole, so now it has a snug but not tight fit. Today or tomorrow I’ll glue it in place, probably with epoxy.
I’ve never liked gorilla glue much–the gorilla super glue is great, the foaming stuff I’m not crazy about. In my experiences with it it standing to expand too much and make a mess.
I would use slow-setting epoxy, or possibly superglue gel.
Another alternative would be shellac paste, but in that setting it would take forever to set, because it sets from evaporation.
The gluing is done–first glued a strip of paper to the liner with superglue, then opened the blowhole on the liner, then put epoxy in the headjoint and on the liner and glued it in, after masking all the surface I didn’t want to get epoxy on with either tape or vaseline.
It worked! I think the liner will stay glued in for the foreseeable future.
The flute is easier to blow now with a stronger tone, but it’s horrifically out of tune with itself. A 440 only happens with the slide a good ways out, and then low D is 25 or so cents flat and high D is 40 cents flat. It’s a mess. I have the cork adjustable, but am having a hard time figuring out where to start. With the slide all the way in A is a 30 sharp cents A#, and low D is a 40 cents flat D#
I wont have much time to devote to it for a while but I’m clearly going to have to get a handle on the physics of flute tuning
I know I’m posting this too late, but in my opinion, a solvent-based contact cement is the way to go. It has all the advantages of other glues and and very few disadvantages.
It applies thin, doesn’t set up fast which allows plenty of time to position the piece, doesn’t foam up, unaffected by moisture, adheres to most all materials very well, and can be released with heat for removal if needed. the one disadvantage may be that the pieces need to touch…its not as good a filler if there is a gap…if so, then the epoxy might work better in that case.