hey folks: I’ve owned and played a silver flute for a few years now. No one has every given me any lessons or anything. Every time I put it together, I have to keep making minor adjustments as to where I want the top piece and the bottom piece rotated to my preferences. Is there a way to make a socially appropriate non-scarring adjustment mark on a silver flute that will let me, in the words of Ron Popeil, “Set it and forget it.”?
don’t take it apart 
Sharpie?
I did that when I first got it and after months and months, it tarnished like nobody’s business and then i had to shine it all up. No thank you.
Is that a question or an answer?
that’s an answer
this is a question
ya can’t just sight down the key work and find something that lines up?
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With the flute assembled, put a small piece of masking tape on the underside of the head, and another on the underside of the collar. Draw your registration marks on the tape in pen, pencil, etc.
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Draw registration marks directly on the underside of the head and collar using a wax crayon. The light red/orange colors seem to show up best on nickel silver.
Neither should be really visible when playing, and both can be removed easily.
I just use one of the indelible ink pens sold for writing on CDs and the like (a thin red one). It wears off in a few months anyway so you can decide whether to renew it or leave it to revert to nature. After a while of reliably setting up in the same place, tarnish marks on the flute tend to make it obvious where you want to put things. I still place the marks out of sight on the bottom/back of the joint. My flute is silver - I don’t know whether the wearing-off effect is the same on nickel, brass, gold or platinum.
More of an answer. Assemble the flute, get it to where it plays the way you want, and place a dot or parallel stripe on the seam of the head and body. Alcohol should make it wipe right off.
The situation is really no different than with a keyed simple-system. On both, I line up the head by positioning the embouchure relative to the tone holes. On the tail piece, I position the split between the C and C# key with the D tone hole. Works every time, although I find I don’t always want the embouchure in exactly the same spot, anyway.
Thanks. I’ll use the Sharpie/Magic Marker method that seems the safest. I’ve always had difficulties “eyeballing” and lining things up. I particularly didn’t want to do something with this flute that would damage it for future owners. It was a gift to me.
Some metal flutes actually come with index marks, of course, though it is relatively unusual. However, if you really want/need permanent marks, you could always take it to an engraver (jewellery/sports trophy type…) and have discrete dots or short lines marked on it to your specifications. I doubt they’d charge you very much for such a minor procedure. Done well, even in a prominent position such as the top-side centre-line of the tube, subsequent owners would hardly be able to discern they weren’t original. Also, depending on what maker marks are engraved on the body top socket area, you might only need a dot on the head set to align with a chosen point in those markings.
Ohhh, and just like all the people over on the stringed instruments forum have a luthier (myself included), I have a jeweler too. I would get a few marks on each segment, so that the flute could be adjusted personally for other folks too. I’m that nice.
Thanks.
I used two dots of nail polish, one on the headjoint, one on the body. Doesn’t cause any permanent harm (you can pop them off with a fingernail).
Funny Story:
I use metal finger and thumb picks to play guitar. Not so many though, just two fingers and one thumb.
One day they were adjusted perfectly for my fingers and I knew that I would want to know which was for my pointer finger and which was for my middle finger. I figured out nail polish would work but my wife owns no nail polish. So I took them to work and asked a lady who sits by me, who I knew had plenty of shades of fingernail polish if she could mark them differently with two different shades of fingernail polish. Then I had to explain to her what they were because they freaked her out.
Sharpie is what I use. Make a stripe from one section to the other. It easily rubs off. I replace it once in a while.
I used nail polish. That didn’t work so well. Brushing over top the ridges and stuff doesn’t give a fine line. I think masking tape may be the way to go.
Oh my goodness. Where on earth did you get those?
I so want some! 
Any guitar store will have them among the pick supplies. There are plastic versions that are sad. I’ve seen two different versions, one is pointier and I like them better. I’ve seen a few versions of metal thumb picks. These are all minor variations. The person in the picture is wearing them backwards from how I wear them. I’m guessing they cost about $1 a piece.
I understand the attraction of marking things for convenient alignment, and in fact did that initially. But I found that favored alignments migrated a bit over time…and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I’d suggest learning to set angles by eye, sighting along the length of the flute, and then tweak as needed. Just takes practice.
Re headjoint, flute teachers and music store pros seem to consistently advocate placing the center of the embouchure hole in line with the tone holes on Boehm flutes - but when they demonstrate that, they align it with the tops of the un-depressed keys! But if you depress the principal keys so they’re flat on the toneholes, and put the far side of the blowhole aligned with the keys, you’re about halfway to the way they claim it should be done.
In this article, Jennifer Cluff makes a convincing argument for (approximately) aligning the far side of the embouchure hole with the tone holes, a la Nicholson and most Irish fluters. http://www.jennifercluff.com/hdjointset.pdf
She also gives reasons why this might be more significant with a Boehm than with the typical wooden flute, for reasons related to the weight of all that keywork and balance points. While emphasizing that it’s somewhat an individual equation. That’s what works for me.
The reason I’d steer away from marks, even very temporary ones, is that there’s this mental tendency to believe that the way you’ve marked it is the “right way”, and consequently forcing yourself to adapt to that rather than shifting things to make your playing easier or more effective. But if you’re absolutely sure where you want things, by all means go ahead and mark the parts. Nothing wrong with that - as Cluff points out.