Lesson Learned - 6/5/13

Sometimes flute knock pins just aren't worth removing.

Selmer flutes, especially model FL300, and some Bundy flutes have the devastating combination of:
1. Low-grade key oil that dries up on the hinge rods, leaving behind a thick, sticky residue that makes the keys sluggish or sometimes causes them to freeze all together
2. Knock pins that are driven in with so much force I can only assume they load thousands of them into a cannon, then fire that cannon at a flute in the hope that one of the pins will embed itself into the appropriate key. These pins then have all of their excess ground off, so that it's impossible to grab them and very difficult to strike them accurately with a knock pin remover. Not that striking them accurately matters much, because they still won't come out due to the whole cannon-pressure thing.

I got myself into a lot of trouble today trying to remove the knock pin on a lower stack on one of these flutes. As of the end of work today, I've managed to remove it, but only after completely ruining the plate it was driven through (the one between the E and D keys) and severely bending the hinge rod by striking it repeatedly and forcefully with a knock pin driver. I decided to take that plate off so I could remove the lower stack keys and clean and reoil the hinge rod, because the keys were pretty sticky. But having gotten myself into this quagmire, I know that it would have been easier to just reoil the rod and carefully work the keys back and forth until they were free. This wouldn't have been a permanent solution, but now I've given myself a great deal more work to do - work that I can't charge for because I've already given an estimate, plus the work is for a friend. It would have been cheaper to oil the rod with the understanding that they keys would probably gum up again, and just agree to address any future stickiness with periodic oilings for free for the life of the instrument.

I know for the future to just not bother if a pin is giving me that much trouble. Now all I have to do is remember that in the heat of the moment the next I'm getting ready to hammer the living piss out of a flute key.