I’m obviously using something I shouldn’t be using for my blackwood Olwell, with regard to the tuning slide. It’s stuck every time I try to move it.
What should I be using?
Thanks!
Jeff
Hello Jeff,
I don’t know what you have been using, nor what Patrick olwell recommends for his flutes.
I can imagine that some of the thicker greases, like the little pots of vaseline like substance can become a bit too solid in low temperature.
I use the Tuning Slide and Cork Grease from Selmer which is commercially available around here. It is a siruppy liquid and i have never had problems with it.
Good luck
and be careful with superglue 
Jeroen
Jeff,
Don’t know about your Olwell, but the slide on my Olwell (silver) is of the dry variety - it’s not supposed to be lubed at all. This could be your problem, lubing a slide that’s not meant to be lubed. Better contact Patrick O…
Loren
Loren -
Er, I think that must be, as I too have a silver slide. Oops. I hope I didn’t ruin it.
Thanks!!!
Jeff,
I doubt you’ve ruined it, I’m sure Pat will have some suggestions for you.
Good luck and let us know how it turns out!
Loren
I’m currently borrowing a polymer flute, and i absolutely cant get the tuning slide to budge. It was greased a little before i got it, and was slightly difficult to move, but now I cant move it at all. Any help would be much appreciated.
Do you have either a Rawhide or Rubber mallet handy?
Loren
In talking with Bryan Byrne about maintenance, he said that he used vaseline, about a tbsp heated over open flame with a pea sized ball of beeswax to thicken it. He said that chapstick was a decent substitute, so I used the chapstick like stuff that comes with all the Susato whistles as slide grease and it worked great.
By some slide grease, get a free plastic whistle.
On 2002-11-17 10:36, Loren wrote:
Do you have either a Rawhide or Rubber mallet handy?
Nah. I just clamp the headjoint in my bench vise and grap the body with some vise-grip plyers. Comes right apart.
On 2002-11-17 12:45, MandoPaul wrote:
On 2002-11-17 10:36, Loren wrote:
Do you have either a Rawhide or Rubber mallet handy?Nah. I just clamp the headjoint in my bench vise and grap the body with some vise-grip plyers. Comes right apart.
I wasn’t being a smartass, the question for scotsman was a serious one.
Loren
I wasn’t being a smartass, the question for scotsman was a serious one.
Loren
Well, you’ve got me curious. What’s the hammer for?
Freeing his frozen tuning slide, what else? I have a suggestion he might try if he has a rawhide or rubber mallet, but I don’t want to waste the time writing up the directions if he hasn’t got the proper tools.
Loren
Loren- thought you were joking at first. I have a small wooden hammer- maybe if i put something soft like a towel to protect the flute. If all else fails, ill just free it like mandopaul mentioned..
Well, I’d assumed Loren was joking about taking a hammer to a stuck flute. Just to be clear, I was joking about bench vise and vise-grip plyers!
Since you have a polymer flute, have you tried running hot water over whichever side of the stuck joint is the outside to make it expand? That might be enough to let you twist it loose.
Paul- tried the hot water- it worked great. Thanks for the help.
Okay, here it is then (Keeping in mind this should NEVER be attempted with a woodenflute, for reasons that will soon become obvious):
Place the flute on your lap and, depending on how concerned you are about the wooden mallet marring the polymer surface of the flute, you may want to put a thin towel or something over the flute. What you want to do is position the flute so that you can strike the flute in the area where the slide is frozen - NOT the exposed center section of the joint, you don’t want the tubing to bend right there at the divide, but rather you want to hit the area of the headjoint just above the tennon band, and then probably also on the barrel section just below the that tennon band. Start on the headjoint side, support that end of the flute on one of your thighs, and let the other end hang in the air. Use the mallet to strike the area I mentioned with a fair amount of force, and then rotate the flute a few degrees around it’s axis and repeat. Continue this till you made it all the way around and back to where you started - maybe 6 or 8 blows with the mallet. Now, see if you can move the slide. If not, repeat this process on the barrel section and try to move the slide again.
The idea here is that the tuning slide grease has hardened and formed a bond like glue, and you want to break that bond with some shock - sort of like they use ultrasonic bursts to dissolve kidney stones, only a wee bit cruder here.
I had a Copeland Low D that I tried forever to free the slide on. Nothing worked. Not soaking, freezing, heating, pulling, twisting, sreaming, cursing…nothing. I tried all these things numerous times to no avail. Michael Copeland and I were talking about silversmithing and metal work one day, and I mentioned the frozen slide. We talked a bit and he suggested this method of freeing the slide on my Low D, but let me be clear about something here: Michael told me specifically that he would not endorse this method of freeing the slides on his whistles for the average Joe with no metalworking experience, because more often than not they will damage the instrument. However he felt comfortable suggesting I have a go at it because I had access to the proper tools (rawhide jeweler’s mallet) and I’d had some experience working metal.
Well, I took the whistle with me the next time I went to the metalworking studio, grabbed a big rawhide mallet, and gave the Low D a good half dozen fairly hard whacks right over the frozen tuning slide…and Voila! The slide was free and working as good as ever A quick cleaning and re-lube and it was good as new.
So, while I’ve not heard of anyone trying this on a polymer flute, it’s what I’d try if I had a plastic flute with a stuck slide.
Loren
Well, now I see that the problem was resolved while I was typing. Oh well. That’s what I get for assuming you’d already tried the hot water trick.
Loren