A while ago I bought this flute on e.bay. Here it is beautifully restored by Chris Wilkes. It sounds as good as it looks. It has 7 keys and a patent head.
here it is before.
As a friend of mine would say, “J,” “J”! (for “Jealousy!”)
Gorgeous flute, gorgeous restoration job.
I wonder why only 7 keys, though…did they make a lot of flutes with only one F key? It seems curious to omit the long F.
WOW!!! 
It was originally a six key, a c nat key was added later, Chris thinks it was added by the original makers as the key is a Rudall one. As the flute is small to medium holed the crossfingered f nat is quite usable. The man who I bought it off said it was bought as new by his great great grandfather (not sure on the number of greats needed here), who played professionaly in an orchestra and had been handed down.
I’m playing it in at present and terrified of cracking it…
If you oil the flute before you play it there is less chance that moisture will find it’s way into the wood. So oil it well and play on. I’ve never had a flute crack, even a new flute, that had been oiled. I’ve played new flutes (or flutes unused for years) for hours with no problem - after they’d been oiled lightly.
I don’t clean all the moisture from the flute after playing. I run an oily piece of silk through the flute, more to distribute the moisture (no big globs of condensate to soak into the wood) than to make the flute totally dry. Swabbing with a dry cotton cloth is worse than nothing. It dries the flute too much and strips oil from the bore. Total drying is OK perhaps for a metal flute but not for timber.
By the way, MM doesn’t clean his flute out until the morning after - and that’s after playing for hours and having drink taken. Make of that what you will.
Nice looking flute!
When I got my Blackman/London flute, I was told that an old lady had said that her Grandfather had played it in a churh in London when He was young.
Hard to prove, but kind of cool.
I remember this flute when it sold.
Nice job (no small wonder) by Chris. Surprised he got to it so soon!
The long-F key was actually abhorred by Charles Nicholson, so that RR made one on order (about the only way they’d do it, i suspect) isn’t strange at all. Remember, George Rudall took flute lessons from Charles Nicholson JR (jr was the famous one, though Sr was the one who came up with the large holes)
Many of the original Nicholson flutes by Clementi are without the long-F key because Nicholson didn’t see a need for it. He also hated the pewter plugs…because they were too noisy.
My own Clementi-Nicholson had a long-F added by the firm (as the keys match, much like this Rudall).
The long-C though is a different animal to me. I have not seen many RR or other flutes w/o the long C (in the 8key flutes, that is…4 key it was obviously common and RR made a few of these).
The silver shoulder certainly gives it away, but I wonder whether the boring hole of the C doesn’t reflect it better. Perhaps a different seat?
Anyway, beautifully restored.
dm
Beauteous, trees; just beauteous. And you’ve done such a good thing for its soul, too. 
Hey, that’s what I do too! Cool. Can’t play it like you guys, but at least I can dry it like the big dogs. 
Hammy Hamilton has also suggested just shaking the flute out, especially if the air’s particularly dry. Just make sure you hang on to both the barrel and the head (put your hand over the slide area) when you do it; also the long keys (long F in particular).
Fascinating stuff, David. I’m amazed that anyone would have been opposed to the long F; I can only assume they used another way to go directly from F to D and vice versa, perhaps with cross-fingering? On a good day I can slide my finger off the short key to go direct from F to D without letting out an E on the way down, but I sure can’t do it very reliably, and it’s even harder to go up from D to F using the short key without letting an E squeak out on the way.
I wondered about this, the seat to the C key is the same as the rest, an inset upwardly domed shape. Chris seemed very certain that the key was as it should be, I wondered if the c block had been damaged and replaced by the shoulder but he says not.
i guess i wonder further about the silver saddle being by the RR house.
Seems they’d have done a block replacement, as was done with my Clementi to add the long-F
If the key work is the same and fits the period…
and the hole was drilled properly to match (though they changed the seats later)…
the work was likely done at the right time…
but why disfigure it with a silver saddle?
regrding the long-F…
Nicholson was a proponent of the “slide” that allowed the player to drop from short-F to D as long as the key was either small in touch or, as many Rudalls were later, slanted in that direction.
Remember, the right hand was ANGLED toward the holes, not in perpendicular as they are today, so the move upward from D to F was actually very easy.
I’ve only seen one flute player today (doesn’t mean there aren’t others…) move seamlessly from F to D and back without the long-F…or cross-fingering…and that was Chris Barry. We got to play together in Doolin’ (thanks to cocusflute!) and it was great. He played an air that had this move and I watched closely to see how exactly it was done.
Christy plays a Rudall, so it was nice to see the handiwork!
dm
Very cool, I just tried it and it works well…it’s similar to the approach I use for hitting the Bb key with my thumb, a sort of rolling/twisting motion.
But I still prefer my long F key
Ah that’s interesting, I’d read Nicholson’s description of holding but I hadn’t thought of angling the fingers, but once I try it it makes sense of the way the Csharp C keys are shaped. As you say you can then rock on and off the Fnat key quite easily. What will it do for my rolls though?! Those taps will be harder…
skinny fingers, i’m afraid, Brad!
i can’t…mine are too short and too thick. I vent the short-F key inadvertently when i hold it like this.
dm
Really?
That’s what felt the most natural to me. I’ve been working on switching to perpendicular because I’ve never seen anyone else play like I did.
Even though there are good reasons for playing perpendicular, it’s nice to know I’m not the only one with the angled approach, even if they’re all dead.
Jennie
OMGOMGOMGOMG What if … that’s what killed 'em???
Hi, Jennie!
I seem to remember that Josie McDermott held the flute this way as well. I’d have to pull out my Come West Along the Road video that has him playing an air to confirm it, but in my memory I see him angling the fingers down on the lower three holes.
And yes, Cathy, he’s dead too 
the angle not only allowed for the comfortable placement of RH3 between the very small space between the short-F key and the foot keys (for those who do not rotate it outward, typically toward the audience)…
but it allowed RH1 to more easily depress the long-C key (and second-touch to a Bb and sometimes the trill-E key…etc) since angled, the finger is now next to or just above the key touch tip.
With a perpendicular grip, however, we must move the RH1 sideways to activate the C key.
Held in the angled manner, though, RH3 becomes even further away since it’s now not only lateral distance but linear that makes the hole so darn challenging for some!
whoever said this was easy!?
dm
Then why not just move the RH 3 hole laterally? I know some makers do this… when did the grip shift happen? Am I hopeless, or was I onto something retro and wonderful?
At present I have no keys to trip over, so can’t make a comparison of key stretches.
How come the more I learn, the more confused I become? 
Jennie (not dead yet, but a day closer to it than yesterday)