my friend peter brought me his flute. he had done several things to the flute that an average person, who isn’t a musical instrument repair technician, isn’t supposed to do to a flute… and then he figured he could “repad” it himself. so he bought a “repad kit” (yes, they are available, no i won’t link to one, because repadding your flute by yourself is, for the most part, one of the wrong things to do with a flute) from gemeinhardt. they come with pretty much everything you need to either repad your flute, or get into big trouble: a leak-light, a screw driver, a bunch of white shellac, fifteen random pads, a pad-slick, and poorly written instructions (which he didn’t give me). he, then, took the screw driver and proceded to…
lose a pivot screw.
they’re TINY — no more than an a half-centimetre long and a few millimetres in diameter — so it’s not particularly surprising that he lost it, but if he weren’t under the impression that one could repad a flute themselves, he wouldn’t have had this problem. compounding that was the fact that, another of the things you aren’t supposed to do with a flute, that he did, was dip it in a river… and then attempt to lubricate the lower stack with vegetable oil.
now, i can see how, particularly if one is camping or something like that, and one “accidentally” dips their flute in a river, that one might consider the possibility of lubricating it with vegetable oil a possibility… and i am also aware of the fact that, at first, it does, actually, lubricate the inner workings of your flute, but it very quickly hardens and then your flute won’t work at all… which is what happened to my friend peter.
these are all things that a qualified instrument repair technician can fix, fairly easily. they are NOT things that i would recommend doing to your flute. now, don’t get me wrong, i have worked on flutes which were in much worse shape than this, but he could have saved himself a lot of trouble if he had brought the flute to me, first…
although i probably would have recommended that he refrain from dipping the flute in a river, all together… 😐