I’m curious if anyone is aware of documented cases of sockets or tenons cracking due to the joint becoming tight from moisture absorption during playing? Over the years I’ve heard other makers say it’s possible, but I’ve never seen it in my own repair work, nor have I ever run across a documented case, although I suspect they’re out there. Anyone?
I’m also curious, for those of you who practice an hour or more (at one time) per day, just how tight you top socket/tenon joint gets, and what wood you flute is made from.
Currently, as I’ve significantly ramped up my practice time to 2 hours minimum per day, I’m finding that I’m forced to switch flutes halfway through, because either one will swell so much in the first hour that I then have a VERY tight socket, with wood on wood contact Granted, due to my wood sensitivity, I’m playing non-Grenadilla flutes, so this is clearly a factor. However I am curious, how much swelling other “long” practicers are experiencing, with various woods.
Blackwood, with cork lapped joints… haven’t noticed any increase in tight-itude of the joints after a couple of hours playing per day.
(I did used to notice the second joint being slightly tighter back when the same flute was thread-lapped though. I put it down to the wrappings swelling, rather than the wood).
Have seen boxwood joints so tight they might have broken if forced apart (heavily played on humid summer night)…fortunatly letting them dry overnight solved the problem
Even at that, I think it would be tough to break a tenon w/o bending at the joint at the same time.
Loren, I think there are two factors at play here that will affect your experience of tenon joint swelling and contraction. The first would be the type of wood, and the second would be how close to equilibrium the moisture content in the wood is kept during periods of playing and not playing. Obviously denser woods like blackwood will swell and contract less radically than more absorbent woods like boxwood (i.e. the difference between the extremes of contraction and swelling will be smaller in the more dense woods). So you’d like to keep this difference between extreme contraction and extreme swelling as small as possible, and in an ideal world the way to do this is to keep the humidity around the flute constant or nearly so. Of course, in the real world this is impossible, but still there are measures that can be taken to keep the flute from drying out when it’s not being played. (Keep in mind that after a good long session of playing the flute is saturated, so unless you store it in a barrel of water it’s going to dry out some no matter what you do.) The measures you can take to keep the flute from drying out are oiling it after you play, storing it in a humidified container, etc.
What any flute likes best is an environment of equilibrium when it comes to moisture content, and despite whatever measures are taken the natural environment plays the biggest part. In other words, it makes a difference where you live. The best environment I know of for wooden flutes is Ireland - moist the whole year round. But we can’t all live there, alas. Where I live, in the mid-Atlantic portion of the US, it’s very humid in the summer and can get extremely dry in the winter - especially indoors with the heat on. So the only way I can approximate an equilibrium for my blackwood Olwell is to keep it in a Tupperware with a humidifier. (I do this year-round, although I do get a bit lax on refreshing the humidifier in the summertime. Still, I think keeping the flute in a tight container during the summer does help keep its humidity closer to equilibrium.) Before I started doing this about 10 years ago, I had one ring on my headjoint that always got loose in the winter, but now it never does. And the only time my tenon joints are noticeably loose is if I skip a couple of days of playing (which I rarely do, since I practice at leat an hour most nights and play two four hour sessions a week), or if I travel by air with the flute. If I’ve been playing for a really long time, sometimes the flute is very tight when I’m done, but never so tight as to be difficult to get apart.
Now friends of mine here who have boxwood Olwells do report problems getting their flutes apart when they’ve played them for long extended periods of time. This is probably unavoidable since boxwood is so much more absorbent than blackwood. Probably the only way to deal with this problem would be to move to Ireland, or get very diligent to the point of obsession with the countermeasures available to keep the flute from drying out. Moving to Ireland, although expensive, would probably be the sane choice, IMHO anyway.
I’ve never had a tenon crack, but there have been many times when I haven’t been able to separate the first body piece from the head/neck. Each flute it’s happened with has been boxwood with metal rings. The pieces always come apart a few hours later, and I always make sure to swab them out before letting them sit (upright).
Just as a point of interest in these cases: It’s actually the socket that is most vulnerable, rather than the tenon, as circles are much stronger when forced from the outside than they are when pressure is applied from the inside - think of how arches bear weight.
With my first flute (African blackwood - not by a known maker but as to the sound it was okay for a beginner) the tenon cracked inspite of all the care but in my case the cracked parts of wood began to overlap and then mysteriously shrunk . Now the tenon doesn’t fit into the head piece anymore - it’s just too loose (even after hours of playing), and I can only play it if I hold it together with insulating tape. Not sure what a flute maker would say but I haven’t done anything about fixing it because I was very fortunate to come into the possession of a previously owned keyless Hamilton - a dream to play even though as a beginner I don’t do it justice - and as to the tenons - it goes without saying that it’s great workmanship and I really like that the tenons are strengthened with silver bands .
Boxwood swells considerably more than blackwood, cocuswood the least (of my lot, anyway). Thread-lapped tenons seem to tighten a little more than cork-lapped, but not a huge difference. I keep the flutes at 60 - 65% humidity and play about 2 hours at a stretch on average.
I ALWAYS use cork grease or the beeswax/almond oil block on the tenons before assembling. I figure I can wipe off any excess later, but that the little extra grease helps for extra moisture resistance. When I oil the flutes I take my finger and swipe extra oil in the sockets, the socket “boots”, and also hit the tenon ends.
When I rewrap tenons, I wrap only until I have a good fit, but not super-tight – if I need to I’ll use a round or two of Teflon tape to seal things without making the tenon too tight when the flute swells. That way I can just take the tape off after playing.
I’ve also sanded cork tenons a bit. Basically, I’d rather add a little Teflon tape or beeswax stickiness than risk a joint so tight it’s immoveable – although when that happens, the joints usually shrink sufficiently after a couple of hours on the flute stand.
I don’t know if any of this makes sense or not, but so far it seems to work pretty well.
My flutes from Ireland in particular are MAJOR moisture hogs; hence the 65% rH target.
Finally, if I haven’t played a particular flute for a week or two, I’ll try to play it in a little – say, no more than a half hour or so the first time out.
(Except for the McGee, which is so stable I’m starting to wonder if it’s Delrin in disguise. )
You should have told me, I’d have left the scotch tape on from when I had it Still, even after as little as 15-20 minutes of playing that adorable beastie, my fingers would start to tingle, much longer and they’d start to itch - not sure if it was the Cocus causing that or my urge to permanently make off with that flute
Hopefully “Little Cokey” is now getting the attention he deserves.
No one has posted on rosewood yet (honduras/honduran - whichever is correct). I had a Sweet without slide, and after playing 2-3 hours it would be tighter than at first, but I never had a problem easily pulling the two apart. It had yarn lappings, and I greased the yarn, the wood that sticks out past the thread/yarn, and I’d at times put a tiny bit of cork grease on the end grains of the tennon.
I realize Mopane is probably the most recently added wood to the Irish flute market. I’m new to it as well. It seems to absorb much more moisture than blackwood even though is it supposed to be about the same density. I haven’t noticed the swelling problem yet because I don’t play it, yet, more than an hour.
Any experience with Mopane out there in terms of the tenon swelling?
I can’t be of too much help on that one, as I’m just breaking in a Mopane Bb, and I’m finding that while I love the sound, I’ll probably never play any Bb flute for more than an hour at a time: The exaggerated bent back left wrist position required aggravates some tendonitis issues for me, so I have to take it in small doses.
Actually, his size isn’t so obviously out of range – a lot of people have mistaken him for a bigger kid – but his high voice gets him in trouble a fair amount.
I’ve noticed my Burns FF gets noticably tighter at the joint after I’ve been playing a while. And that my Jon C polymer has a LOT more condensation visible after the same amount of playing time.
There may be more going on than “Mopane absorbs moisture”. We generally keep our house on the cool side in winter (~64 F), so that a cold flute will condense a lot more moisture than it will once it warms up - and I’ve noticed that the Mopane Burns warms up much faster than the Jon C polymer. This may be nothing more than design - the Jon C is a Rudall model with a long foot and tuning slide and weighs a noticable amount more. But even when they’e both warmed up the Mopane flute seems to stay drier. And it may be imagination, but the amount of condensation seems related to how recently the flute was oiled.
However - even on weekend afternoons when I’ve put in 2-3 hours of playing I’ve never had any problem taking the flute apart - snugger, yes, but not enough tighter that I’ve seen any cause to worry.
Granted, due to my wood sensitivity, I’m playing non-Grenadilla flutes, so this is clearly a factor. However I am curious, how much swelling other “long” practicers are experiencing, with various woods.
but in my case the cracked parts of wood began to overlap and then mysteriously shrunk 
. Now the tenon doesn’t fit into the head piece anymore 
- it’s just too loose (even after hours of playing), and I can only play it if I hold it together with insulating tape. Not sure what a flute maker would say but I haven’t done anything about fixing it because I was very fortunate to come into the possession of a previously owned keyless Hamilton 
- a dream to play 
even though as a beginner I don’t do it justice - and as to the tenons - it goes without saying that it’s great workmanship 
and I really like that the tenons are strengthened with silver bands 
)
