Be happy they don’t sell recorders now!!
you should go there and play it until you get BOOTED out.
but seriously, i’m sure the owners of the shoe store would get a KICK out of the flute!
I wonder if anyone has done that? I know I am getting a kick out of it right now. Just got it playing, with dental floss and sticky wax in the key holes, plays great, good tuning.
Aanvil, you will have to come over and try this, it is as nice as our favorite Fentum.
I’ve got a Wylde “from Rudall & Rose”, 25 Villiers St, Strand, London, sitting on my dining room table! It isn’t tootable at present, though. So now I’ve got the Baack, the Wylde and a Metzler plus an anon English 8-key (which I’m working on currently) awaiting attention! (As well as the box full of lesser stuff…)
I did a Google maps satellite image search on Villiers St, but it’s not worth posting here. Seems the premises now house a cafe, an accountants and apartments. The search on the address that got that info also produced this: http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/?irn=248516, so it seems it was an address firmly associated with flute making in the mid C19th!
Looks like that Powerhouse Museum link http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/search_tags.php?tag=flute is a good one for online flute pictures similar to the DCM as a resource! Add it to your flute research favourites, folks!
Both these addresses, like the various R&R addresses, are pretty much within a stone’s throw of each other in the Soho/Covent Garden heart of C19th London flute-making. There seems to have been lots of premises sharing, swapping and interchange of craftsmen too, perhaps unsurprisingly! I wonder if anyone actually makes anything of any kind in central London these days?
Looking forward to giving it a try Jon!
I wonder how many other biz have been in that building since?
Tailor, cobbler, butcher, Chip shop, curry shop, Nepalise bistro, shwarma palace, Falafal King, Hummus Hut… 
Watch out Jem you might end up with 20 flutes like me! Cool, another Wylde, they are as close to R&R as you can get.
I think it was something like a flute guild on Soho Sq. the Unicorn guild? You had Potter’s, D’Almaine, Pask, and a few others that used the unicorn stamp for a while.
If the stones could talk…
I doubt I’ll end up with 20! Can’t afford to! I need to fix these up and sell them asap really, lest the interest on my credit cards with which I bought them eat the (potential) margin.
The Wylde is badly but fixably cracked through head and barrel plus a crack in the upper body which doesn’t seem ever to have opened as it was bound up, presumably to support it on first appearance. Also the tuning slide is seized, plus it is missing its long F and several springs. Otherwise it’s in OK nick. Don’t know how I’m going to replace the long F, but otherwise, there’s nothing I can’t sort out. In due course I’ll do some before-and-after pics like I’ve set up with the Baack.
Not to much of a problem. It is funny that Kevin Krell’s Wylde has a broken long F, maybe it was a bad casting from the same batch?
Hey, I know a guy that just cast some long F keys…
Weeeeeeellllll… - a certain thought had crossed my mind… 
Seriously, I’m not ready to attack the Wylde yet, but when I do it had occurred to me to investigate “outsourcing” - certainly there’s no way I’m going to get into casting myself, and I don’t really know anything about cold-forging, though I am planning to talk (very nicely!) to a certain Mr W next time I see him… For sure, this flute is probably worth the additional cost of buying in a replacement key, whether new made or cannibalised off a compatible wreck. A lesser instrument might be left minus its long F (not snapped in this case, so far as I know - just missing), but I fancy getting this one back in full trim. I’ll also have to rebuild one pillar of the guide lug for the long F which has chipped off, but that’s not a big problem.
Thinking of the outsourcing issue, the Baack flute will ideally need a new D section ferrule ring for the foot and a threaded cork adjuster for the crown as the thread on the original has stripped. So, come the time…
Cold forging is fun, you pretty much just smash the stuff on the anvil, then file and sand and shape it into what you want. The key cups will need the appropriate dapping block and driver, that is usually done gradually through the sizes, until you get the size and shape you want. The trick is to not pound on it to much, but anneal it shape it, anneal it… The nwhen it is finished pop it in the toaster oven for a hour at 500deg and it will harden the silver, presto!
Speaking of which…
Kevin Krell
One has your name on it! That is why I cast so many…