What`s with this polish obsession?

Another method that doesn`t involve ANY scrubbing is to get a dish that can hold your headjoint, lay some aluminum foil at the bottom, pour in baking soda, and let the headjoint soak for 30 minutes.

Tarnish will simply go away.

Now before you get the idea to submerge your flute body in a casserole dish... THE PADS CANNOT BE SOAKED.

Hmmm...

::digs out old Armstrong flute and Casserole dish::

Curiousity struck and I submerged my Armstrong flute in a disposable aluminum cassarole tray filled with baking soda...

Superb cleanup job! Afraid it can`t do anything for pits that have developed, but at least all the tarnish that made them particularly gruesome is gone. So now if someone were far far far far far away all they would see is the gash of bare copper. lol

The fun part will be if the flute plays at all after the pads dry out.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sylvangale/

And another fun part will be when the pivots rust, or the baking soda crystallises again and becomes an abrasive.

BTW, this method needs only a tablespoon of baking powder and works a lot better with hot water. Simmering works. Of course aluminium is necessary. Either use aluminium (not tin) foil, or simply an aluminium saucepan or dish.

The baking soda`s only function is to act as an electrolyte. A little detergent added may help too.

It has been a housewife`s trick for many decades, for cleaning `the silver` - long before aluminium foil.

Lol! Piko!! Why didn`t you take all the keys off before doing this? It would have saved you a lot of trouble in the long run.

My Armstrong is just a decoration, always find something to do with it over the years. Was certainly fun to try.

It`s quite interesting to note that a flute looks quite beautiful underwater.

Lol... the flute plays just as well after the 30 minute soak. Perhaps water is not as destructive on some pads.

Seriously?!! Does it really still play after soaking for so long?

Seriously it does. I suppose if they were soaked and dried without being touched there isn`t much room for deformation, no?

Ahh, okay. I thought maybe you still were using this flute as a back up or something. In that case....let the experiments begin. Lol!!

Normally, when pads are soaked, they swell. When they dry they do not normally return to their previous thickness. Of course more modern felts may have their fibers treated/coated in such a way that they do not react to water.

But with flute pads, unlike clarinet pads which are punctured during installation, the water may actually not be absorbed during a brief encounter with water. The three small flute pads would normally be punctured however.

As for the rust, if the pivot rods are well coated with oil, they will not encounter the water. If they rust, it may well take a few weeks for it to develop enough for the mechanism to seize.

I am sure all pads on a flute are ironed and have that hole in side so skin doesnt swell with the heat. Ironing makes skin flat even if pads are not glued they will still need it.
Pad irons are sold in catalogs with holes to iron around the screw and washer.

The only new flutes I have seen without obviously ironed pads had no name or serial number on them.

Flutes can be submerged as long as all the keys are removed and body is dried with compresed air.

Just a few opinions.

Many technicians, even those working on the very top lines of flutes, do not iron pads. The higher the quality of pad, and the better the instllation technique, the less they need ironing.

Well that is true. Pads with hard felt are not ironed. I was thinking of student models.