HOW to CARE
for YOUR FLUTE
DO
Keep your instrument dry. This means wiping any moisture from the inside with a thin, clean cloth like a large handkerchief.
Wipe finger marks off with a non treated cloth. You’ll need to do this usually within half an hour of using the instrument, otherwise tarnish will start to occur. Most manufacturers now supply these cloths with instruments.
When it comes to cleaning parts of the instrument that you cannot reach and are not absolutely certain you can clean without damaging it, leave it to a competent repairer.
Wash your hands before playing.
Clean your teeth before playing so you don’t get bits of food in the instrument or onto the pads. Your breath speed is at least 100 kilometres per hour when playing, so anything left over after lunch will soon end up in the instrument!
Develop your finger technique so that you use light finger action.
Assemble and dismantle the instrument properly by holding it without squeezing the keys.
Clean the moisture out of a wooden instrument as moisture will quickly swell the wood and cause it to split.
When traveling in a car, place your instrument on the floor or in a secure bag in case of a collision or having to stop in a hurry. Your instrument can become a projectile which can injure the occupants of the car or damage the instrument.
Have your instrument serviced by a competent repairer every twelve to eighteen months. Make the booking well in advance as good repair technicians are in high demand. Flutes & Flutists and Notus Winds have a service division that are renowned worldwide and trusted by professionals all around Australia and overseas. We provide complete guarantee for our work and your satisfaction, or your money back, so you can have absolute peace of mind.
Put the damp cloth back inside the case as it will just leave moisture with the instrument.
Subject your instruments to sudden temperature changes, especially leaving them in a parked car when it might get very hot.
Use chemically impregnated silver cloths on the instrument, as the fine chemicals in the cloth can be abrasive and will also damage the pad surfaces.
Ever leave the instrument on a couch or bed. Sooner or later, someone is sure to sit on it and it’s very difficult and expensive to then fix. In some cases, it may not be repairable at all.
Use vaseline on the joints. It attracts dust and causes the metal surfaces to grip.
Use cigarette papers to clear moisture from the pads. They usually have an ingredient that slows down burning but this also damages and could get stuck to the padskin and tear it off. Use the cloth you use for swabbing the moisture out of the instrument (such as the large handkerchief) but don’t press hard, only enough to soak up the moisture, and don’t pull it across the pad, only use dabbing motions.
Lean on your instrument. A common cause of instruments and mechanisms becoming slightly bent is when young students are at band or orchestra practice and they lean forward to talk with their friends. Without realising, they put pressure on the instrument and this bends it slightly but enough to cause significant issues to its playability.
Slap the keys (if not required from the music). Hitting the keys does not get any more sound from the instrument and causes early loss of adjustment.
Oil your instrument’s mechanism. If you have it serviced regularly, it should not need oiling until the next service. However, if you absolutely must oil it yourself, use Mobil One oil. To apply the oil use only what you can pick up on the eye of a needle and touch the joint where the rods move. The oil should soak into the crack. Remove any excess with a tissue or cloth as you do not want any oil to contact the pads or run onto the rest of the instruments and collect unnecessary dust.
DON’T
Cleaning
VS
Polishing
At Flutes & Flutists, we draw a difference between cleaning and polishing.
To service or overhaul a flute, all the surfaces need to be clean, free of dust, oil, acid and fat from perspiration. A service does not necessarily mean the removal of tarnish. Unless tarnish is severe, it does not affect the performance of the flute and the only reason to remove it, is to restore its shiny original appearance.
Perspiration is made of mostly water and a small percentage of fat and acid. The fat and acid, combined with the oxidation of the silver, creates the tarnish, giving the flute what many people feel is an unattractive dark appearance.
There are some very fine and well-known players who think that the tarnish enhances the appearance and sound of their instrument. They certainly don’t think it detracts from it and judging by the results of their playing, it is hard to argue against them!
To remove tarnish it is necessary to do more than wipe the surfaces. It can be done by using a buffing machine which usually involves a lathe with a fast spinning cloth that rips into the tarnish, removing it. The problem with this approach is that no matter how skilled the operator, it takes some of the silver or silver plating off, which means the flute does not potentially last as long. The best way is to do it by hand, which is the way we do it at Flutes & Flutists. The downside with this process is that it is very time consuming.
Keeping your flute clean and looking like new is possible, but requires assiduous attention to wiping it every time you use it and putting it away after use. If you are doing a long playing session, it is necessary to wipe it every half an hour or so. This way the tarnish is kept to a minimum. We know this because when displaying flutes at an event, people will be trying the flutes all day and we are wiping them down soon after they have been play-tested. At the end of the day, we put them back into their cases and as long as we have kept wiping, they will stay clean and shiny.
If we miss any areas, by the time we get back to the shop and put them away, it can be too late for further cleaning with a non treated cloth and will need more aggressive cleaning involving some silver cleaning product.
We don’t recommend you do this yourself as the silver cleaning product needs to be applied very carefully and should not be allowed to get into the mechanism or onto the pads. If this happens, the mechanism will need to be cleaned out or the pads may need to be replaced, which adds more time and expense.
Keeping your flute clean and minimising the development of tarnish is a constant process and players vary enormously in their dedication to doing this. Some people never clean their flute and at the other end of the spectrum, some people clean it all the time. It is because of this that we make an optional quoted charge for removing tarnish. If you manage to keep your flute really clean, then you will keep the cost down to just the time of the service. If your flute is tarnished, you will have the option of paying for the extra time to have the tarnish removed by hand or you could leave it tarnished and look well used.