Anyone know of a clear or light-colored substance (easy-to-use resin of some sort, perhaps) for filling in a little bit of a hole (to flatten the pitch slightly) on an antique flute?
modelling beeswax
Nail polish
I dunno how well it would stick (if the wood’s resinous), but a clear epoxy, like Dubl Bubl, might be worth a try. Available at your local home improvement shop.
Beeswax, as it can be removed without damaging the instrument. I’m fascinated by the fact that my flutes will most likely live much longer than I will, and would always try to make the job of the flute restorers down the road as easy as possible (especially if the instrument is antique even to me, in my lifetime).
Sonja
Speaking from a GHB standpoint room empties, crickets chirp beeswax was the old fashioned way to flatten notes on toneholes. Nowadays we use tape (usually electrical or medical). Might sound kind of sloppy but when you think of all the folks with rubberbands over the keys of their old flutes it’s not too bad. Just replace the tape regularly and use fresh tape to get any gunk off of the wood.
Cheers,
Aaron
I will try beeswax, but I would think it would melt under my fingers.
If you apply the wax with a hot needle around the inside of the hole your fingers won’t even touch it.
I don’t know the melting point for bees wax but I’m certain that it’s well above your finger temperature. Mind you, I don’t know your finger temperature either.
It might get soft, but as you don’t usually poke around in the tone holes of a flute with sharp pointed things accidentally, this shouldn’t be a problem. It will certainly not melt to the point of liquidity. To my knowledge beeswax has a higher melting point than other / synthetic waxes commonly available and used in candles - but I admit being too lazy to google for it now.
Beeswax is also used on recorders for the same purpose. At least over here in the old world.
cheers + happy tuning,
Sonja
I’ve had good success mixing beeswax with a few drops of pure linseed oil for malleability and melting it in an aluminum pie plate over a pan of boiling water. Formed into a block (I pour mine into an empty, foil-lined Altoids tin (& then peel off the foil after the mix cools)), this is also a great emergency tool for “dirtying up” a loose tuning slide or joints contracted by cold. Have also used it around loose tuning corks. Best of all, it wears off eventually or is wipeable. Good luck!
Cool, thanks.
Jessie,
I’ve mixed neetsfoot oil with pure beeswax to soften it. The process works great. If you need either PM me an address and I’ll mail you some.
Just in case anyone has been lying awake at night wondering…the melting point of beeswax is:62C/146F. apparently.
Good! now I can go to sleep 
I keep thinking that there is some Shellac stick that you melt, like hot glue stick, that is used by flute makers to set the pads? but I’ve never used it. I have used wax to retune recorders, but did not like the fact that you could not call it a permanent fix. I have used epoxy as well, and shaped the hole with a Dremel tool.
Jessie, there are great wax’s in the jewelry industry for casting, I’m sure you know more then I do about that, but they seem much harder and more stable then bee’s wax.
Yes, but jeweler’s waxes are dark blue, green, or burgundy…they wouldn’t look very good on boxwood, and I wouldn’t know how to get them to stick.
A non-permanent fix will be fine for now. But if I find that it doesn’t poorly affect the rest of the tuning, I will try something more permanent.
On another list, a recorder player recommends the waxes that dental technicians use. He says the waxes are very sticky, have a higher melting point, and that there are special tools available for dental technicians for working very precisely with warm wax.
Unfortunately I don’t know a dental technician, but maybe you do 
I really wouldn’t put something “permanent” on an antique flute, especially if you dislike the tuning - chances are that it is meant this way, if you like it or not, and that you are destroying some evidence later generations might be very interested in. Doesn’t apply to modern factory-made recorders, of course.
Sonja
Well, I agree with the second part…future generations might like to put the flute on a shelf and not play it at all, because the tuning is so out-dated, but about the fact that it was meant to be that way, tuning has changed a lot over the last 200 years, and (perhaps) unfortunately, a well-playing instrument is worth more than a flute you would hang on the wall.
Many people play and enjoy historical tunings. I’m not against retuning an antique flute at all, I just wouldn’t want to destroy the historical value of an instrument when there’s an alternative that works just as well. And if I want a flute that plays and sounds like a modern wooden flute, I get just that - a modern wooden flute.
Sonja
Well, yes, many people play flutes tuned to A=415. And I prefer modern flutes’ tuning to older ones’. But there is something magical about a 200 year old 8-key flute. And if the F sharp is severely flat and the A is severely sharp, it’s not playable. A non-playable old flute by a maker who is known a little, but not hugely, is worth a few hundred dollars. A playable flute by a maker who is known a little, but not hugely, is worth a couple of thousand dollars. It’s like the opposite of numismatics (coin collecting). I think, if the tone of the flute is pleasing and everything but the tuning is right on, the tuning should be modified. Classical flutists who play on (old, as they all are) Louis Lot flutes have generally had most of the holes completely moved, so as to be in modern tune.
It just hurts to think of epoxy on a - so far - well-preserved antique instrument. But go ahead, I can’t keep you from doing it anyway.