I was at a session the other day and was drying out my flute with a small bit of cloth and a plastic dowel rod, and the cloth got totally stuck in the bore! Obviously, I had too much cloth and should have used a smaller piece, but it’s always worked in the past. I’ve been using that little rag for ages and it’s never gotten stuck. There was no getting that thing out either…
Couldn’t play anymore so I went home and absolutely could not figger a way to get that thing out, but I did notice that a tiny bit of cloth was sticking out of the F# hole, so I took some needle nose pliers, tugged a bit, and using a very sharp pocketknife, cut the part that was hanging out. Kept on doing the same thing and eventually ended up with a pile of little bitty shredded up pieces of hankerchief. I didn’t notice any marks or anything else in the bore, so I guess it’s none the worse for wear.
A buddy of mine said the exact same thing has happened to him a couple of times, so I thought I’d see if anyone else’s experiences mirror mine. Any other suggestions as to how to safely remove the cloth?
Try using an old silk hanky for a bore-swab. It’s hard for me to imagine anyone managing to get one of those wedged in the flute. Maybe half a hanky for you…
a couple of times happened that the cloth went off the rod when cleaning the headjoint. that was a bit of a problem because i didn’t want to take off the crown and the cork to push the cloth out (flute is new and i don’t want to touch anything if i don’t have to). it took a while to take it out, by using a little and long stick to grab the cloth.
But it never happened that it got stuck in the bore… you must have used a very big piece of cloth, no need to do that imho…
Yeah, fluteflag would be good, but I’m more of an improviser. Silk would be better (that’s what Gramps Levine uses). I was just thinking of creative ways to get that thang outta there if it ever happens to anyone else.
Yes, same thing, and I made it worse by trying to push it out from the bottom with the rod - packed it tighter. I also worked at it through the F# hole (handy that its so big). Plan B was going to be making some sort of gizmo to attack it with up the bore without any sharp bits being able to touch the wood.
I have taken to using a narrow strip of cloth long enough that there is always some not in the flute.
Silk does “squish down” the best in my experience (it also dries really fast, for quicker packer-upping!). Regardless, my keyed flute is pretty small-bored so it happens to me every now and then, especially if I’m yakking while swabbing. So what I generally do is wind the cloth fairly tightly around the rod and, as mentioned earlier, without too much at the top (except when swabbing the head). During the “doh” moments when I’ve left too much at the top and the cloth does get stuck, I twist the rod so the cloth wraps more tightly around the rod and thus takes up less bore space; it usually pushes back out pretty easily from there.
However, my best swabs over the years have been the smaller ones where I’ve just cut a silk kerchief down by about a third and hemmed the cut edge. I might have to run the swab through the barrel an extra time or two, but that’s still less time-consuming than “swab surgery.”
This has happened to me too. When you try to pull the rod, the wet swab clings to the inside of the bore, wrinkles up, and wedges tight. Then it won’t budge in either direction. So now I use a silk strip nearly as long as the stick. When it gets stuck, pulling on the end of the swab, rather than pulling the stick, frees it right up. I’ve had two flutes with really narrow bores, and this happened all the time.
Have you tried using your rod as a push rod in the large diameter cavities - head, barrel, top of LH, sockets of RH and Foot, and then as a pull rod for the narrow bore areas.
Pull rod = drop the rod backwards through the section first, in the manner of a clarinet pull-through.
That enables you to have a good amount of fabric to swab the big spaces successfully, but not so much that gets stuck in the small spaces. If the cloth is also fairly long and it does happen to get caught, you have something sticking out to pull.
Saw a flute flag in the store. Didn’t want to spend the $30 since it was made for a boehm and I wasn’t sure it would fit right. Made my own out of a .69 cent wooden dowel and strip of sham-wow folded over and glued. Did it on both ends and trimmed some of it away on one end so it’s smaller.
Since were on the topic of swabbing, and I know its been covered, but how important is it to get ALL the moisture out? I mean it seems that some moisture left in is OK. I seem to recall hearing that Matt Molloy waits to swab out his ax. Also, when meeting Skip Healy and trying out his flute, he had put it back in the case without swabbing.
As to my habits, using a cleaning rod and old piece of cloth, I swab during sessions because I think that extra moisture impedes and slightly hinders the sound and responsiveness. I also definitely swab after every session and most every practice.
I hesitate to share this, but here it goes. I haven’t swabbed my flute out in years. That is, I only swab when I’m oiling my flute. Otherwise, I shake the moisture out or tap it on my leg and shake it lightly over my leg. No swabbing after playing.
Right. The Fluteflag is very good for getting out moisture during a performance,
because you can swab a whole assembled flute at one stroke.
But it doesn’t get all the moisture out.
I reached the conclusion some time ago that I was more likely to damage
a flute by swabbing it than by not, so I stopped. It’s been
a few years. No problems so far.
I’ve never had that happen during routine drying-out, only when using smaller scraps of cloth cleaning out a long un-used and gunked-up flute being overhauled - a mistake well learnt from. For routine swabbing I use a long 1/4" dowel rod without an eye and a fairly large piece of silk (cut out of an old shirt). I fold one corner of the silk over the top of the rod and then fold/twist the “shoulders” so formed around the the dowel, then push the rod with one hand and cloth through my other hand lightly holding things together, twisting as I go. I then insert the cloth-&-rod into the flute body (head removed but otherwise still assembled) and push-and-twist it down the bore as far as it reaches (not right to the foot - which doesn’t matter), give it a few twists and pull it back out. The cloth is always longer than the dowel or how far it is pushed into the flute and I keep hold of the excess. If it sticks a bit, as Cathy says, twist a bit more in the same direction and it will tighten up around the rod and be easier to pull out, or you can withdraw the dowel which will make more space and loosen the cloth. I never try to push/pull it right through. For the head, start the same and push the rod/cloth up to the stopper, then pull out the rod and use it to tuck and push some more cloth up the tube to fill it and get up into the corners by the stopper face, give it a few twists (with the rod in - doesn’t work so well without) and pull out. Again, there is always plenty of cloth hanging out to tug on.
Thread the point through the hole in the rod’s tip, enough to cover the tip.
DROP the bottom of the rod through the section of the flute I’m cleaning, and grab the end after it passes through, and PULL the swab through, twisting as I go.
I do have to bunch the cloth up around the tip to swab into the headjoint, but certainly not so much as to get it stuck.
Prompted by this discussion I have in front of me an old piece of silk about 18 inches square, a pair of scissors and some uncertainty as to the best shape. My 4mm fibreglass rod has no slot
A bit bigger than a gent’s hanky and more rectangular should do you - say 10x15" approx…and remember to allow a bit if you’re going to bother to hem it.
Now that I think about it, up until recently, I always stored my flute in a wooden box that I made myself, and I always carried a paper towel (kitchen towel I think they’re called in Ireland)… anyways, a kitchen towel rolled up loosely and used it to swab my flute after lengthy playing. Roll it up on a diagonal and it’s long enough to reach halfway into the fute. A little up and down, twisting gets most of the moisture out. It’s stiff enough to be pushed into the flute. I might roll it up semi-tightly to make it small enough to fit in. I also use this to oil my flute, then throw it away, thus I always have a pretty fresh swabber at hand.
I recently bought a roll up flute case and haven’t put the paper towel in there. I should probably do that just so I have the option of swabbing.
