Anyone have a secret to keeping ferrols tight on a flute? I live in a rather dry area and some of mine are getting a bit sloppy
Dave
I guess you mean the rings or “mounts” as the pipers call them. This is a good indication that your flute is drying out too much! You should store it in a airtight container with some sort of Damp-it or wet rag. (make suere it doesn’t touch the flute) The flute should be stored in a 50% humidity. Find a humidor gauge on ebay, make sure it’s accurate! If the flute drys out to much, you have a good chance of cracking the head or barrel.
I usually start to worry when the sockets get loose. We have a lot of humidity right now, so not a problem, but when the Santa Ana winds start blowing, our humidity will get down to 15%!
Pipers tend to call them ferrules. 
Mounts are different again.
Uhh, Bro, it’s called a humidifier, you put one in your flute case… haven’t you been paying attention in class?
Dude, if you crack that Cotter I’m gonna come over and crack your noggin’
Loren
Oh dear… 
OK, I gooogled it, the mount is the little end piece on the end of the chanter. Learn something every day…
Uh oh…I don’t have much stored in my noggin, Loren! 
I can’t afford to lose any!! I guess I’ll have to do the baggie/humidifier thingie… there’s no room in the Cotter case for a humidifier, and I don’t want to stuff one inside the bore…that’s asking for trouble. Yeah, I’m piper-oriented… for a piper, ferrols are rings around hollow parts of the drones which slide over the tuning pins…mounts are the bulky pieces which appear at the base of tuning pins on the drones. Thanks all, for the suggestions…
hugs n’ love…
Dave
When I acquired a previously-owned flute with a loose ferrule, I e-mailed the maker and was told to put the flute in a plastic box with a damp sponge for a few days. The box I used was one I found in the plastic wrap section of the grocery store. I think Glad and others make them and they come in lots of different sizes- one is about the size of a flute case. I could have run all over town and spent more for a fancier box, but why???
You’ve got a Cotter? Irish-made flutes have a tragic way of warping and cracking when they’re transported to drier climates, i.e. anywhere outside of Ireland, unless they’re taken very good care of. Loose rings are an early warning sign of that.
So ditto on all the advice to humidify the thing. I use orange peels in the case, myself. Replace them when they dry out, and if they get moldy it means you don’t need to humidify. Also, if your flute came in one of those cool wooden cases, don’t use it. You’re better off getting something more airtight. Cavallero zipper pouches are good.
you might try a humistat. check out http://humistat.com/. their number one size will certainly fit in your cotter’s box, it did in mine. Will fit in those flash hard cases Pat Olwell sells with his flutes too, alongside the cork grease lipbalm thing. Mine have been excellent in general and particularly useful when traveling, and they have the lovely advantage of being ridiculously cheap. I wouldn’t waste any time about doing something though, when rings start falling off, the next thing is a crack.
Thanks, I ordered a couple of those Humistats…look like they might do the trick. Until then, I wrapped a moist sponge in cellophane and placed it in a short length of (what else?) copper tubing. I appreciate all the knowledge… honest, I won’t let the Cotter get messed up, it’s too nice a flute.
Dave
I recently played with a fiddler whose case included a long rubber piece of a very thin hose attached to with velcro tape or something like that. Inside the hose there’s some kind of clothe or sponge stuff. He dips the hose into water for a while, then he dries out the rubber part with a towel and put again into the case.
He said to me that his luthier had presented that to him and was very common, but I’'ve never seen that before in shops here.
The ‘Humistat’ seems safer to me for the instrument though.
I like that natural-wise solution. Does the flute get any scent from the orange peel?
That’d be the Dampit humidifier for violins, it is very common and you’ll find it in most online violin shops. The idea is it puts the humidity inside the violin where it can do the most good (violin exteriors are usually varnished, don’t forget). They also do one for guitars and mandos. I guess if you don’t play such instruments, you won’t have seen them.
That’s the one. You should see music shops in my town…Could I put one of these into my flute?
P.S. Gary, do you think failure to get the stuff out of the flute while playing will affect to tuning?
Well, it fits through the f hole of the fiddle, so it should have no problem fitting the bore of a flute. I don’t own one (I have a bunch of the “Planet Waves” humidifiers in my flute cases instead) so I dunno how long the Dampits are, or whether you’d need one for each section of the flute.
Might be worth asking on the Strings forum if anyone has one for fiddle, mando or guitar, they’d know how long the tubes are.
Yeah, I reckon forgetting to remove it before playing might affect things. Your Porsche Carrera GT, all out beauty, speed and power, hugging the curves, ready to go like a rocket when you put your foot down, might suddenly become a Fiat 126 650 with one of the sparkplugs missing if you did that.
Playing before getting out the Damnpit from flute:
And after:
It’s not often you see a Paddy McChud and a Grinter together in the same post like that.
Here is my set-up for my favorite antique flutes. I put the extra Damp-it when I go to the desert…
Hey Jon, where’d you get the peachy case? BTW… I placed my flute in a sealed plastic tub with a moist sponge, and gradually the ferrols are tightening up… crisis avoided.
Thanks,
Dave
Kevin Krell gave it to me.
I have seen them on the Internet, they are used for carrying sensitive equipment.
A friend of mine is going to start making wooden flute boxes, he is designing them to be air tight. He is a Master cabinet maker from Germany, I can’t wait to see what they will look like… So stay tuned…