No, not about my cat stepping in gum, or hygeine-challenged pickpockets.
My low C#/Cnat pads have gone a bit sticky, especially the C#. If I’m playing an air where I press the touch down for a sustained Cnat and then I release it intending to jump directly to D, say, instead I get the annoying progression Cnat-C#-D. Anyone else ever get sticky pads like this from time to time, and if so do you have a reliable and pad-friendly remedy aside from repadding?
TIA. 
Are you sure it’s the pads? If so just pull off the foot keys and clean the surface area where they rest with a little bit of naptha. Often residue builds up from oiling, and you just need to clean that off the wood. If it’s sticking at the blocks you need to find out where it’s binding. If you look very carefully there should be a shiny spot where the key sticks, put a little dab of graphite from a pencil there. If it still sticks file it down ever so slightly with a really fine nail file. It only takes one delicate pass with a nail file usually, so be careful!
Yep.
Isn’t naphtha a bit harsh? If not, cool. In the meantime I’m hoping for more common solutions to be found around the house, first, if possible.
I see you’ve added to your post. I imagine cleaning the wood (which I hadn’t thought of, so yeah, it’s pads or wood or both, but nothing with the mechanism) with a gentle soap solution might do too, am I right?
Don’t know if it’s right for a flute … But naphtha is the cleaner base in many furniture polishes. It’s also lighter fluid.
Naptha is fine and dandy. I sometimes re-finish sitars for people and I use naptha to clean up all the years of lemon pledge that they used. It will not eat your finish, just use a little bit.
ew, tree frog!! 
Okay, but my flute doesn’t have a finish on it. It’s barenaked blackwood. I certainly wouldn’t use rubbing alcohol either, so I’m less than reassured, so far.
Unfinished wood, and pads. What do we have for cleaning both or either, here, folks?
Again, naptha, it just evaporates, and will not lift the grain.
Okay, thanks. Will keep it in mind.
Meanwhile there’s no naphtha in my cleaning closet. So, short of spending money I don’t want to if I can help it, what else is worthwhile?
(Thanks to the anonymous caller who suggested drawing the ungummed part of rolling papers several times between the pad and seat when in their contact proximity. Ahem. Of course, I don’t have any of THOSE, either. 
)
I knew I missed at least one.
So, that’s it, then? Lighter fluid and rolling papers? I suppose at least one of my friends has those…
should make it fairly simple to get the thing going…
the paper should tell you if it is the wood or the pad
Yeah, if I set a match to it. 
This is true. Just dry paper, no treatments?
how much crap do you drag out on stage?
yeah, nuttin’ on it
Nothin’ like these guys:
I don’t know the first one… forefather?
Rahsaan though!!!
Unlikely. He’d have to be able to actually get a girlfriend first.
well played
uncle then?
Not so’s anyone admitted it was family history.
BTW, being as I had no naphtha I tried the rolling paper thing (cigarettes, you glassy-eyed 420 Clubbers) and while it gave no indication that I could see as to whether it was pad or wood that was gummed up, it definitely did the trick. Thanks. 