devastated
Commiserations! What have you done to it?
left it on the bed… needless to say, someone came along and a butt was wrongly placed. feels like a pet just died. i feel like getting an indestructible polymer now..
All may not be lost. A friend sat on my keyed Lehart once a week before St. patrick’s day with loads of gigs to play. Ralph Sweet was able to cobble it back together even with a bit of the g sharp key hole broken in time for my gigs. He was my hero. The repeir eventually came undone a few years later due to playing in very sticky weather in Barcelona. If its an expensive flute worth repairing. You should try. I sold the flute pieces but I think it was repaired again?
It happens. Do you have a picture? jon c may be able to help.
Save all your little slivers of wood.
[img] http://www.mediafire.com/?dkwczn8pgfvmyb2 [/image]
[img] http://www.mediafire.com/?pcpfa95fb2m36y1 [/image]
'ere ya go…click 'em if ya want
Not a catastrophe. Very repairable.
There is a song about wayward bums that sit on musical instruments:
Agreed. Nasty, but repairable.
An unhappy sight, but as others have said, certainly worth a shot at repairing. It would help stabilise the repair if you were to replace the wooden “rings” with metal ones, but that is probably outside your range of resources.
What’s also interesting, if you don’t mind us picking over the remains of your loved one, is the condition of the bore, as can be seen through the convenient viewing aperture you have inadvertently created. And on the inside surface of the broken bit.
It appears extraordinarily corrugated. Have you been in the habit of not oiling and not mopping out the flute after playing or is there another explanation?
Terry
Are you mis-seeing the broken wood as the bore, Terry? The bore itself looks smooth to me. Unless I’m mis-seeing it.
I’d think he is.
Terry, if you click on the picture in my post it will link to a bigger picture. I think what you are seeing is where the bit broke of of the main part at an angle.
Ah, whew, you are right. I had to brighten the image considerably to be sure.
So we are not seeing the bore at all (except in the socket area), just the torn fibres of a massive sloping grain fissure. (Slumps back into chair…) I feel better now.
(Sits up brightly.) At least that gives plenty of gluing area for the repair!
Terry
another bloody optimist 
I certainly don’t leave my bores that corrugated! Some tooth is good for resistance. That is not bore you are seeing, but freshly broken wood.
This is one of my Folk Flutes. Unfortunately, getting sat on is a not uncommon occurrence. I get at least a few of these each year. Enough so that I state “do not leave your flute on a chair. It will get sat on resulting in breakage at the socket/tenon joints” or words to that effect in my care instructions.
I hate it when this happens. Finding decent wood to make flutes from is getting harder and this type of breakage seems avoidable and a waste. But it happens.
Casey
And to think I got all bummed when I left a homemade pvc flute in the car during a summer heatwave and it developed a curve (in the right direction no less). No worries for me no mo’.
Terry - you were not alone in what you thought you saw at first. I keep my netbook’s brightness down to save battery life, the screen was at an angle, and it looked like the the poor owner (poor as in "poor soul with a broken flute) used a steel brush on a drill to clean the bore! Brightened up, with the right angle, and it’s clearly just the break.
Too funny.
Eric
cough I’d squinted at the big one when I was moving the pictures around so’s I could link 'em back to here…
My little kids (7 and 9) are playing around with the idea of learning the metal flute and it always worries me that they tend to leave it on lying on any horizontal surface, including the sofa. It’s only my old Armstrong Model 90, so it wouldn’t be any great loss to humankind (it comes from the pre-Cooper scale era and so would probably be happier at 435Hz than modern pitch!
I have repaired a Boehm flute that got sat on and had to be delivered outside its case. It came up surprisingly well, but what a job that was!
Terry
My little kids (7 and 9) are playing around with the idea of learning the metal flute
Aaaarrrgggghhh!
Maybe you DO want somebody to sit on it