Last flute I took in for tenon adjustment, the guy did it in about 90 seconds. They must do it a lot.
Loren-- do you know of a good source for a tubing expander the right size for D whistle slides?
Depends on the tubing size you use. You could give Ferree’s a call, and tell them what size tubing you’d be expanding, and they could tell you if anything they carry works.
Actually, come to think of it, you could kill two birds with one stone, and have your machinist custom make you an expanding mandrel for your lathe that would do double duty: 1) Hold your Eb/D/C size workpieces for turning and repair, and 2) Properly expand tuning slides. Pay to have it done once, and you’ll be set for many years. You’d need to get, or make a draw bar, if you don’t already have one for your lathe, but I think those usually sell pretty inexpensively (for your lathe) on ebay.
We had tens of different size custom expanding mandrels at VH, so I could usually find one that was exactly right (from a soprano/sopranino) to expand the slide on a D whistle, when I needed one - just put the mandrel in the lathe, attach the drawbar, slide the end of the slide over the mandrel, and slowly apply pressure with the drawbar wheel. Keep in mind though, that the wheel on an Atlas drawbar is significantly smaller than that of a South Bend Lathe Drawbar, so you’ll have less leverage to work with for expanding slides.
Or, have a look through the MSC catalog and see if you can’t find the proper size expanding mandrel there - it wouldn’t be the sort you could use on the lathe, but you could use it to expand tubing a bit. I seem to remember seeing expanding mandrels in the MSC catalog at one point… I think.
Loren
Yeah, and if you have the right tool, it only takes seconds. Oddly enough, the same tool often cures overly tight slides, because one cause for an overly tight slide is being out of round, and the expander tools can be used to put the piece back into round, before any actual stretching/expanding is done.
Loren
Certainly helps those with the James Galway “Mash the sucker 'gainst you face” school of embouchure. My new (and crack-prone) Goulding d’Almaine is curing me of any undo mace-mashing. I live in fear of something going ‘Pinkkk!’.
OOPS! Wrong forum. I was actually referring to my collection of Busmans, O’Riordans, Thin Weasels, Abels, Roses…