How might a crumbly head cork affect tone?

Irish Flute
1

Hi-
I have, and am obsessed with at the moment, a lovely 19c cocus f flute, airtight, fully in tune, rich loud easy lowest octave,
2nd octave very variable (irrespective of embouchure!, though comes in after about an hour).
Ungettable 3rd octave (probably me, here- or need different fingering.

The head stopper is crumbling badly, surface is uneven, little bits come out when I dry the head joint; position is ok- 15mm, same as bore diameter.

Does anyone know how this may affect the sound and playing characteristics? I have read that the end of the stopper acts as a reflector for the sound waves…

The end cap is firmly stuck, and I am afraid of forcing it. Do some end-caps screw on? If not, then the copper pie/dowel technique could work.

I’ve been worrying about this for some time- have limited funds for repairs, but could rise to it for a really good restorer- wary of ‘technicians’. Want a specialist! Any recommendations? I live in Cornwall, UK. I’d love to send yummy images- but assume this forum does not allow attachments?

All help and advice gratefully recieved.

2

I had a former flute teacher who was old and crumbly.

It made him sound bitter, curmudgeonly and rather thin on the ground.

I suspect that if your head cork is this, way, it will sound the same.

Nothing is better than getting it replaced. There’s no point in enduring bad relationships with things which will pass, especially if you can get rid of them :laughing:

I bought a head cork from the States for a few pounds. It shouldn’t cost much to fix it yourself if you buy the cork, and replace it on the cork holder bit.

3

If it is crumbling away, eventually it will leak and/or be in the wrong place, so, yes, best to renew it. If the crown has a screw adjuster, it will be attached to the cork, not to the head tube, so just put a dowel up the head and push it out - be prepared to catch whatever comes out - it may suddenly give and fly! If you have a separate crown (no adjuster) and cork, the cork will give, push up to the crown and then push that out separately ahead of it - 2 things to catch, though the cork won’t matter.

Once out, probably some of the old cork will have adhered to the head bore, so you’ll need to clean that out thoroughly. Corks sold for Bohm flutes won’t fit, so you have to doctor something, but this is very DIY-able. Get it apart first and tell us what you find. Then we can advise further.

Oh, and you can put photos into posts here - but you have to upload them first to a web-host like Photobucket, where you get a link url for them which you can post here with [img] tags to display it wherever you want in your text. Make sure you reduce any images to a max of 750 pixels before uploading, or they bump the page width here annoyingly. Pictures of your flute would be very helpful - the work in posting them will save a lot of effort in verbal description!

4

A crumbling head stopper adds character to the flute tone. Who wants to sound just like Kevin Crawford? Better to follow Jem’s suggestions, none the less.

5

Thank you enormously, Jem-
I’ll look out a new wine cork or whatever of the rightish size from the country-wine making stuff, so that flauten needn’t be out of action for too long. Pics I took already to get a rough date for it are at base of post. Before I cleaned it up…I assume you meant 750X750 px?
If not, apologies.

Doug- crumbling adds character - really? Really? Am I having my leg pulled as a forum and simple system flute newbie?
Flauten certainly has a lot of character- plenty of upper and lower harmonics if required, and often now when not required, in octave two. Think that’s me as a beginner after 5 weeks of serious practice having hit a glitch and lost the embouchure. I hope so. No real, nasty probs on easier ITM, it’s the Telemann sonata with all the octave jumps…ow.

The crumbleness is that of an old wine on the point of turning, luckily, rather than sharp and querulous- Alaister Sim, not Quentin Crisp…

6

you will not find the rightish size, get something too big and sand it to size

Be kind, some of us are deadly with a cane. :smiling_imp:

7

OK, nice pics of a nice looking flute. Of course, those flat round keys aren’t meant to have pads stuck to them, but little discs of soft leather, which would be thinner - so you might have action/regulation issues??? That G# key looks stuck open in your photos.

So, do we get a report/pics of the extracted crown & cork? Oh, and I take it the head is unlined, since there’s no tuning slide?

The 750 pixel thing only matters on the width dimension - height is not a problem, though it’s probably best to stick to a height which will display on a normal monitor screen - though vertical scrolling isn’t awkward the way lateral is.

8

Thanks! It is a lovely flute, despite lack of range, and is why I’m really going for the practice for the first time ever. Indifferent ‘beginners’ instruments are truly un-inspiring.

When I bought it 30 yrs ago, it had, I dimly remember, no pads to speak of, and was very leaky.
I had it re-padded- obviously by a Boehm-type person. Despite being wrong, all the pads seal fully, and the slight stiffness on the F# and G# is more to do with the leaf springs- easing now with use. Though if they are being held too high all the time by the pads- I did think they looked somewhat bulbous for the overall ‘feel’ of the instrument.

No metal lining- good. So no cracks- tho’ I’ve always lived in old, cold damp places (good).
No tuning slide- bad. Can get it down a little with the joints- goodish.

Am stalling on popping the cork. Silly- don’t want the flute out of action. I can always work on the whistle- will have a go on the flute tomorrow. Have a selection of old wine bottle corks- I assume the best one would be the most densely and finely grained? There’s an outstanding one printed with a ‘cave’ mark. I wish I could remember the wine it came from…
Thought of a good way to stop the endcap flying off into corner of room- loosely bag a tea towel or whatever over the head-end first, secured with rubber band, then put whole thing in padded vice, pointing downwards, insert dowel, and tap.

9

If the head passes a suck test, I doubt even a significantly chewed-up face to the cork is responsible for tone production issues - but before you start blaming yourself it is certainly best to make sure your tool is in optimum running order.

Your lazy/slow returning keys are most likely to be so because of gunk in the key-ways - take 'em off and clean all the parts, including the slots. Metal wadding for the metal parts, meths for the wood. Make sure you rotate the springs and clean under them (between them and the key itself). This will let you inspect the springs to see if they are cracking at all - they can get metal fatigue and give up. Also check their contact points to the flute body in case they have dug a hole/made a rough spot which is impeding their action. Find any such problems, ask (and photos help!).

Back to the stopper - No! Don’t do what you’ve outlined above - it is both OTT complicated and risky to the head tube (you don’t want to vice-clamp it! - nor is that at all necessary). Get the broadest dowel (wooden spoon handle may serve) you can which will fit freely in the head bore. You may be able to just push it out quite easily with one hand, the other holding the head in such a way as to catch the crown. If it is stubborn, place the dowel’s free end on a solid surface, crown pointing up, grasp the head with both hands and use your body weight to pull it down onto the dowel. Just make sure you cup one of your hands/some fingers around/over the crown once it starts to move - or have an assistant on standby. Alternatively, push the dowel end against a wall with the crown pointing towards you and a catcher ready. If that still fails, you will need an assistant and a mallet/baulk of timber: one person grasps the head firmly, maybe bracing arms on something solid, flute’s crown pointing down (into a cardboard box, maybe) and the other taps the end of the dowel with the mallet.

BTW, the reason for catching the crown, and also for not trying to lever it up with a knife-blade, is that they very easily crack off bits around their edges along the grain - so flying around the place hitting hard floors etc. is to be avoided, but dropping into a box should be fine. Yours is intact, so let’s keep it thus.

You may well find useful stuff in this other recent thread.

For replacement cork, yes, a good quality one will be easier to sand down. Exactly what you’ll have to do will depend on what you find after extracting the old one. Whatever, you should be able to get back in action pretty quickly.

10

Oh. It’s odd, though-with the crumbly face, when I started playing a month ago I could get third octave by overblowing (i know, worn), and second pretty easily. A couple of days ago, just before starting this topic, I used the clening rod with silk scarf to rotate away all the bits of crumbly cork from the end- peeered up with pen light, and cork looks smoother, but with big chunks outstanding round the edge. ‘Embouchure’ problems have co-incided with this…
Stll may well just be me.

The keys have a fast snappy return- sorry, wasn’t clear- they dont lift as easily as the others- spring feels very strong.

Will get right onto the stopper. Before I do, what bit separates? Just the wooden cap at the end, or the cap and brass ferrule? I’d reckon the cap only?

THANK YOU FOR OVERKILL WARNING…

11

If the keys are returning OK, why is the G# stuck open in that photo? Unless I’m misinterpreting what I think I see… If they’re hard to press, that could be the springs are set too hard and need adjusting, or again, they may be sticking where they press on the flute tube, impeding movement in one or either direction.

Stopper - see my first post above. The ferrule ring is on the head wood and, even if loose, won’t come out with the crown. Either the crown will just be of the “button” type - separate from the cork, which will be a simple cylindrical lump of cork - or it will have a screw-adjuster attaching it to the cork. If it’s the simpler type, (most likely) it will have a short tenon, probably thread-lapped, to hold it in place inside the head tube as a press-fit, and there will be a gap between it and the cork, so when you start pushing the cork will give, move up to the crown and then push it off. If there’s a screw adjuster, the crown will start to move straight away once the cork starts to shift and they should come out in an assembly.

12

The G# was nver stuck open- the F# did once, but i applied a micro-dot of key oil, and it unstuck.
I suspect it’s friction, too. Will deal with that after the stopper, on the principle of simplifying diagnoses…

13

Ok, I’ve pushed hard with the dowel- I felt something ‘give’, but cap is stuck. The dowel is wet with soggy-cork moisture 2cm up the dowel-end…
Trying step 2.

14

O Frabjous Day!
It is done. It needed percussive force in the end- whacked it with a lump of teak…

Amazing what came out…
Given the condition of the cork,and lack of use since, I don’t think the ‘restorer’ touched it.
It’s just a slice of cork, freely positioned at correct distance, then in the space, some old pads, with glue, and some spares, without. Sorry, picture quality that not good- had to do indoors, got a 30mph gale…it’s cold.
You were so right, Jem. Just a disc of leather.Possibly 100 years old… No wonder they use instruments to smuggle diamonds and such.
(Nasty mental image of Customs taking away flute and levering cap off with a knife…distracted owner struggling to follow, wailing.)

The barrel was surprisingly clean. End cap lapped with thread, but as it is solid I assume this won’t lead to ‘strangulation’ problems.

Now wot?

Cork sanding tips? OOh please.

15

try to keep it round :smiley:

16

Nicely done! (See what I mean about pictures side-bumping the page-width if you don’t trim/compress them? :wink:)

(And nice when things work out so it looks like I know what I’m on about! :pint: :smiley:)

OK, first, if the crown was so tightly wedged in, there is some risk of it splitting the head tube if that swells with moisture, so reduce the lapping (replace with fresh and grease it) so there’s just enough to keep it snugly in place in the tube-end, but you can twist it out with your fingers.

Nice touch by restorer, if 'twas s/he, to leave the original pads with the flute. Or perhaps s/he didn’t remove the crown and they were put there by a former user. The unused ones look as though they might still be serviceable!

As for making your new stopper, try this. Keep your cork whole. Measure the head bore at the crown end and mark a circle that size on the end of your cork. Use a very sharp blade to trim away some of the excess cork slicing down the sides from the marked ring. Then you’ll have to sand it. If you have a drill press, you can try mounting the cork onto a screw (centre of the end you didn’t mark) and mounting it in the drill chuck as a make-shift lathe, then use a strip of sandpaper against it as it spins. of course, if you have a lathe…

Otherwise, you’ll just have to sand it by hand - wrapping your sandpaper around a block of wood and rubbing the cork against it, turning frequently is probably the best way, but it is hard to keep it perfectly round and cylindrical! You may ruin a few corks before you get one good enough! By keeping the cork’s full length as you work you both make handling easier and have more of a chance of getting part of it’s length to the right dimensions, and you can keep checking it against the head tube crown opening. Aim for a snug but not excessively tight fit. When you’ve succeeded, cut it off straight across at one end (assuming the original face isn’t usable), measure a piece about 2cm long and cut off the other end. Fine-tune the sanding, sand the faces flat if necessary, grease it up and pop it in!

Use your dowel to push the new cork in until you can see it looking through the embouchure, then mark your dowel at one end with the head bore diameter and put it back in from the body end and push the cork back until the marker line is in the centre of the embouchure or a little towards the crown end. Suck test the head, then try a toot!

17

Just a thought, but I find the synthetic corks a little easier to work with - and they won’t absorb moisture in the long run. Obviously not authentic, but work well. As to sizing the cork, what I do is a little weird, but it works. I take the tuning slide apart and use the sharp edge to cut the cork (lots of twisting!). I know you don’t have a tuning slide on this flute, but maybe you have another with the same diameter(?). I have never had any luck getting the cork to be perfectly round when using sandpaper or exacto knives. Maybe you can make friends with someone who owns a lathe? I would imagine that would work best.

Pat

[EDIT] Jem was typing at the same time - good info there!

18

It is done.
Thank you a thousand times, all.
Without your help and encouragement, I’d have sent it off somewhere, and not learnt valuable technique.
The cork sanding left me with a conical piece (to match the bore…), not by design. About 1/4 of it was snug to the bore, the rest is usefully looser, making it easier to remove. Think I’ll stick with that next time. Have put it at 14mm from the embouchure midpoint (bore goes 16-13 mm), which seems right. The cork goes right up to the end cap, so I don’t shift it while drying.

I may experiment with different distances, on another cork, to see what happens.
With this new one, the 2nd octave was immediately easy to reach again, clear and pure, without blowing harder or tongue-stopping. So it was absolutely the flute, not me. Before, it took 3 hrs to ‘warm it up’ to playability.

BUT the amazing harmonics went away completely, and there was a pure, clean, even but boring tone. After the cork absorbed some moisture, harmonics returned, though not as they were with the crumblyend.That was beautiful, just too unstable over the octaves.
So unless the 1mm difference in distance before/after renewal is doing it, the surface of the stopper seems to have a profound effect on the sound- may be worth experimenting with some different faces, by shortening the cork, moving it back and adding
roughed-up slices of whatever. There was quite a gap, too behind the original cork slice- this may have created a sort of echo chamber, even through a layer of cork. Need Terry Mcgee on this…!
It’s a brand new playground.
Whee!
I’d love to hear any thoughts on experiments with altering sound by stopper-face etc.
And thank you again. :slight_smile:

19

well if ya really want…

http://www.google.com/search?q=bigio+stopper

20

Hello all -
I missed the two very helpful posts on doing the new cork. Don’t know why. So, now I find that my cork is leaky- I didn’t grease it- but now I have, it still leaks, even tho’ it’s a very snug fit. (The barrel is absolutely sound.)
It must be not quite round…poot.
Jem, have removed some of the tread lapping on the crown, and it now twists out easily. It’s a bit too loose, so will get some waxed dental floss for it asap.
It wasn’t quite clear- should I remove all the old thread and rewind from scratch, or add the new stuff on top? On the upper part of the wooden plug bit, there was a nasty not-all-the-way-round section of old paper- I think- and wax. Scraped it off. Was nothing to do with the threaded section.
I think the whole thing has not been touched for a very very long time. The tread on the surface came off in little sections; it was rotting.
Am trying again with the cork.
All that stuff about the cork face and tone was rubbish- when trying to get the cork out again, it got compressed to 16 mm emb. distance (the bore is 16mm), and the resonance came back- as well as still the better high-note achievement.
I’ll get it all sorted in the end- perseverance! (O my poor, lovely flute)