In Defense of the Flute

     Defending the flute has not always been on the top of my moral compass, so to speak... (Or type, I suppose).  The daintiness... The heavy effervescence of the proper and blindingly technical approach, while impressive, does little to tickle my musical intrigue.  If it were not for the likes of Eric Dolphy and 'Rahsaan' Roland Kirk, I may have very well arrogantly and ignorantly written this instrument off as horribly limited and predictable.
  
The never ending debate of musicality aside, I begrudgingly enjoy working on flutes... HA!  Though they can be quirky and sensitive, much like their intonation (as well as players...),  they bring a wonderful systematic approach to adjustments and function of the instrument.  While I'll take floating a pad over shimming, the regulation, venting, and lost motion involved were much more straight forward than the clarinet seemed.  Perhaps it is because the clarinet was accompanied with me unknowing of what I had stepped into, but it seemed less linear than the flute...

     Here is my project flute.  It was not going to be put up for sale due to it being sort of a Frankenstein... The head (Artley) and foot joint (Gemeinhardt... maybe) were both silver-plated but the body (Artley) was nickel-plated.  We didn't have matching or closer matching head or foot joints, so I made these work and some lucky student after me will have the pleasure of working on it!

This is after I washed my hands... The picture doesn't 
completely give credit to how tarnished these parts were.
(I also should have thought to take a 'before' picture...)

The knock pins on this flute made my first two days frustrating.
Corrosion Cracker really helps, but it still ended up taking forever to
get the entire flute clean!
(Knock pins are mostly permanent steel pins that fix parts of
keys into position.  They need to come out in this case so
that the parts can be safely cleaned in the Pickle

After the cleansing, dents were removed, and tenons were fit 
(which fortunately went smoothly even though all 3 parts were
from separate flute models), I tended to the tone holes.  Much
leveling took place

A key-fitted, shimmed, seated, vented, and regulated flute body 
without lost motion. A small but glorious victory!

A finished repad!  
Note the difference in finish on the flute body and 
foot (the head is hard to see).

     Along with the troubled knock pins, leveling tone holes, and removing dents, I replaced 3 springs that were dead and/or broken.  Key fitting was a breeze and overall, I'd wager this was a pretty standard flute repad!