Waiting for my keyed flute to come, here’s a question.
I used to wear a silver ear ring
witch used to tarnish after only
2 or 3 weeks. The reason of that
is because I have a very acid body
(witch doesn’t meen ugly 
).
So I would very like to know if any
of you experience silver keys to
tarnish all the time.
And by the way, is it a simple
thing to remove the keys to
polish them?
I have a tendency to tarnish things too. For some reason, keys don’t seem to tarnish that much. But yes, block mounted keys are usually very easy to take off. I don’t have experience with post-mouted keys, but i expect they’d be only marginally harder to remove (using a small screwdriver).
g
In the Boehm world, tarnish and wear are sometimes viewed as badges of honor. Anyway, before I became a disciple of that thinking 
(you know, high school/college mentality, show off to everyone that you play a lot & are too busy playing to clean, etc.), a popular method was a Q-Tip soaked in a little rubbing alcohol; then a rubbing/wipe-off with a soft cloth. It’s probably good for interim cleaning, and at least you don’t get that silver polish dust/goo everywhere – but be very careful NOT to get it on the pads or wood!
If the tarnish bothers you, you can order anti-tarnish slips to leave in your case. The Woodwind has them, and I’m sure most major musical instrument stores carry them. Also, silver flutes tarnish less if you keep them in a case. If they’re left out, i.e. exposed to the air between playings, they tarnish pretty quickly.
Dana
Yeah, but what i meant is i think tarnish is less of a problem in 8-key flutes than it’s in the modern flutes, maybe because you don’t keep your fingers on the keys all the time, maybe because there’s much less silver involved.
I also think that tarnished metal sometimes looks better/cooler than polished metal.
Hmm, you could maybe get solid gold keys? Gold keys on blackwood would look very nice!
g
Oooh, goooold. Purty shiny things … 
Actually, glauber, you could be on to something, esp. for the next round of “improvements.” (i.e., 24-K lined headjoints?) I got to play a Rose whistle recently and the gold and black looked as lovely as the way the whistle played. (Want one, want one, want one!)
Anyway, gold is cool, but just don’t do brass. My new Burke brass whistle, probably played for a grand total of 5 hours, already looks like it’s spent half a lifetime at sea!
I corrode nickel silver like nobody’s business. After a time it looks like grey stone instead of metal, and I can’t polish it. But I like that. It looks venerable. It’s a wabi/sabi thing.
Well… I didn’t think I was any precious! But I like polished silver on blackwood!
But Glauber, your probably right saying that it wouldn’t tarnish this fast since the fingers are not all the time on the keys.
And for gold keys… well … I’m not that precious!
But since my grandma always said there’s no stupid question:
why keys can’t be made of simple metal, or any mix of metals that would be stronger and cheaper than silver?
Leo
No reason. Silver is a good metal to work with, and it’s not as expensive as we think it is.
Yeah, think of all those $8 sterling silver necklaces.
My short F key seems to bend about like one of them, too.
Ponytail elastics: what all the well-dressed Hammys are accessorizing with this year!
:roll:
The cost for silver keys is not just about the price of the metal: If you don’t want your keys to bend everytime you look at them wrong (Uri the Uri Gellar Method), then keys either need to be hand forged (and therfor work hardened), or cast and heat treated, either one of this methods is time consuming, hence the cost.
Leonard, no need to remove the keys, just buy a jeweler’s polishing cloth for silver, or a silver polishing cloth sold for musical instruments - I believe the Selmer company sells one under the Bach brand name.
Loren
Loren .Please give us your views on heat treatment of cast keys ,whether it produces a good and lasting product ,and whether it can produce results comparable with forging . I sincerely would love to know what you think on this important question .
I think you are exactly right about the silver polishing cloth ,which must be available in any supermarket ( apologies to Ukranian and North Korean readers ).
I should have asked , in addition , what ,if any , of 19th Century key production do you think was a combination of casting and forging .It is , I suppose , difficult to tell .
Mat’s Handy Hints No. 4563
To polish your silver just use a bit of fag-ash on a finger or cloth and rub away that oxide.
Most sessions will be well stocked with this product (unless you live in Ireland 
).
This is a very safe and gentle way to polish silver and is reccomended by stacks of antique dealers. Oh and it doesn’t make your flute smell like an ashtray. Well not much anyway.
Mat
The experience I have (we do both hand forged and cast/heat treated keys, depending on the application), and that of other makers I know who use cast/heat treated keys, is that the end result can be just a good as that of forged keys in all the important ways: Fit, finish and durability.
Obviously the casting has to be high quality, and the heat treating correct (some makers outsorce the heat treating, others do it in house), in order to insure the keys will be strong but not brittle, but then forging has to be done properly to insure the same thing.
The other thing is that the castings have to be “cleaned up” well - meaning filed/sanded and polished so there are no marks left from the casting process, but this done, they look fantastic.
At the end of the day, when done right, cast/heat treated keys are of equal quality to hand forged keys, and can make the difference between a maker having a relatively short, or very long waiting list.
Having said that, there is a certain something special, at least from a psychological perspective, about completely hand forged keys. As player and flute owner I’m a bit of a romatic, and value hand made items quite highly. As a maker, well there’s only so much time in the day, and people can be quite persistent in asking when their instruments will be ready
Loren
I can’t say, I haven’t stumbled across anything much on the subject. Having said that, I’ll hazard a guess:
A highly skilled silversmith could hammer out (pun intended) hand forged keys very quickly indeed. Now, I believe that during the time in question there would have been quite a few top quality silversmiths available in both England and America, and I suspect that having a silversmith on staff doing nothing but keywork, or possibly even subcontractiong the work out to a local silversmith, would likely have been more economical at that time than having someone cast and then heat treat keys, because you’d then still have to pay someone to do the filing and and polishing. So if you had a large shop or small factory making instruments, at that time, it would seem that it would be cheaper to simply hire one person to do hand forging in house, rather than pay for casting, heat treating, shipping, and then someone in house to do the final detail work. That’s my guess, but I’d love to find more concrete info on what the makers of old had going on in this area.
These days, a single maker or small shop with only a couple of employees, combined with long waiting lists, and modern casting and heat treating technology, sort of swings the economic edge in the other direction.
Cheers,
Loren
P.S. Andrew, In case you missed it, click back to the previous page for my reply to your first question.
Cast and heat treated metal is more brittle than forged. While not knowing much about the differences in forging vs casting in flute construction, I do know about the differences in golf clubs. Forged irons have a softer feel and can be bent quite readily while cast peices are very brittle and will break if bent very much. Golf equipment companies started making cast clubs in order to increase productivity. Since we’re not whacking things with our flutes, the cast and heat treated should be every bit as good as forged ones. 
There are those (and I don’t have any view on the matter ) who consider that heat treatment while hardening the metal fails to deal adequately with the granular structure of castings ,which in time leads to failures . That it is necessary to forge at least part of the key to give strength .That is why I was interested in the combination of casting / forging which in my ignorance I suspect some the early key makers used . I am sure they never expected the keys to be in use after 150 years ,rather than a mere generation ,and may well have thaught casting adequate .Even within a business like Rudall & Rose there are huge variations in the quality and style of keywork ,and I suppose there needed to be as the price of different grades varied so much .I cannot believe that the finest of their forged keywork did not take a great deal of time , even when done by experienced " keyworkers" .
It is interesting to remember how the springs have to be worked to harden the metal ,and make them springy and unlikely to break .
As for whacking things you are doing that every time you use a key .You are whacking the pad against the edge of the hole at speed.
The techniques for hand forging have not changed much over the last 200 years, so a key forged today probably won’t be much different from one made in the early 1800’s. Over the same time period there have been major advances in casting technology. Vacuum casting and centrifugal casting are standard practices, and eliminate most of the porosity and defects which used to cause premature failure of castings. So the decision to use forged keys would have been a much easier one in the early days, but a close call today.
For ultimate strength and toughness, you would still want to choose a forging process, but casting can come pretty close. The turbine blades in aicraft engines are cast, but the disks they are attached to are forged.
Dave Copley
Loveland, Ohio
Interesting .But what of combination casting / forging ? , Mr C.
Perhaps cast titanium keys are the answer !