This is related to my cork falling out of my M&E’s headjoint thread.
I found an old cork that had sat in a drawer for a couple of years, and sanded the cork down so it would fit into the headjoint…only it’s tight, real tight. I greased it up, used a dime and dowel rod, and shoved it in. It’s in place now, and the flute sounds much better than it had over the past couple weeks (when I assume the cork was leaking a bit). The bottom D is once again rock hard.
My question is…with a polymer flute with a brass lined headjoint, will a really tight cork be a problem? My assumption is that it’ll compress with time, the flute is polymer and lined, so it’ll not be a problem…but I wanted to check with someone who might have more technical knowledge than I do on this issue.
I have sent an email to Michael C., but it often takes a few days for him to respond so I thought I’d seek the consensus of our esteemed board members for a quick reply.
Interesting the matter of leaking stoppers. I decided once to find out how big a leak you need before it becomes a problem. I made a delrin stopper and drilled a 1.2mm hole through it. No problem. I had to enlarge it to about 2.5mm before I started noticing real problems setting in. Odd, eh? It’s possible that distributed leakage is worse than a single point leakage. And certainly, you don’t want the thing sliding about.
Thanks Terry. My guess is part of what made the flute sound a little off was the cork may already have been moved. However, I do think some leaking was the problem, because it would play better after about 15 minutes when, I assume, the cork was wet (although I don’t know if the cork was swelling a bit or the holes plugged by condensation).
Could the mobility of the cork have been the bigger issue than a leak? What I’m trying to express is that if the cork moves could that effect sound more than a non-moving cork with a hole?