#WednesdayWisdom Basic Flute Pad Installation part 1 of 2

hey folks this is uh wednesday wisdom this is our weekly informative informative information informative i made that work informative a series on tips tricks and techniques for instrument repair uh today we're going to be going over flute pad installation uh student model flute pad installation on two types of pads i've got leroy here i'm ryan uh so leeroy today we're gonna be talking about installing pads on these keys on a student flute yes um you know this would be great if they have rental stock this information is great for hobbyists that want to learn how to install flute pads and it's also great for band directors that need to have a knowledge of you know how instruments are fixed and how absolute pads are installed so i think we're going to start with the easier of the two uh flute pad installation pets that are glued in and and leroy what pads on the flute are going to be glued it's actually three three so i actually have this one off already so the left hand c which is used by your index finger and the two trill keys here on the back that are operated by your right hand those three and usually those three only are the glued in pads very nice um i guess as we get we get going here the first thing is pad selection and i i we have some yellow ones and some white ones and well two colored lines they're all gray so we either have white or or yellow what's the difference and is there a difference um i'll give you the the convoluted answer yes and no so uh but the the only difference um and i'll say the actual color is this is the color of the bladder skin so the bladder skin on both of these are the same it's just this one has a yellow dye on it and this one is clear and opaque the only thing that makes this look white is actually the felt that's behind it the only other thing that can actually make this pad different would be the type of felt that's used okay okay so as far as skin color um you know the white and the yellow yep doesn't make it doesn't make it perfect good didn't it all right um i guess next since we're talking about gluing these pads in is i guess we'll talk about what type of adhesive yeah we're going to be using i see you have some adhesive items pellets do they these are the glue pellets they are the yellow glue pellets these are awesome because the melting point is low enough where you don't have to get the key too hot when it cools off the hold strength is very good and the other great thing about this is they're basically pre-cut out to sizes for you so you so to get the i'll say a precise amount of glue in a small amount of space or any amount of space these are awesome because you can just count how many you need or how many you don't need very measurable so this this key cut takes three this key cup takes three and a half absolutely this one takes four perfect thank you all right uh i guess we're going to go ahead and go into removing a pad and installing a new pen so leroy yes okay so for doing that on the glue on the glue pad the few things that i'm going to be using right now is our air torch you can also use a regular torch if you want a poker or a pad prick and then a junk screwdriver and you'll see why here in just a second so i'm going to use the air torch to heat this up in the back to take the to release the pad this is the basically the same principle as doing pad work on clarinet on saxophone you're just basically heating the glue up to take the pad out you see you've got that air torque set to about 325 degrees oh yeah 325 degrees for six hours and you got yourself a nice suit oh yeah so now here's the this is the screwdriver the reason i'm using that i'm going to heat this back up just a little bit um is to remove any old glue that's in the pad cup and the reason you want to do that is say for instance you take a pad out and there's either some white shellac or george's glue george's type blue or something other than what you're using it's nice to be able to clean it up and have one type of glue so the melting point of the adhesive is consistent throughout the other thing it does is it puts little scratches inside the pad cup so the glue can actually grip the inside of the pad cup a little bit better so at this point you would take that take a caliper turn that on measure it i'm measuring cleaning the glue off the side a little bit so i'm measuring about a 11 5 11 6 so i'm gonna take an eleven five put that in there looks like a pretty good fit so is that is that a fairly common size on flutes at eleven five yes it is and actually there are two comm well i'll say most common sizes that will be used for the for the trill and the c it's 11 11.5 and 12. okay every once in a while you might get 11 or 12 5 but if you're looking to stock those major sizes 11 5 or 12 is the way to go there so at this point because my fingers are fat i like to use tweezers while grabbing my glue pellets so i will just grab a couple of these and then put them inside the key cup i'm going to use three for this particular one so i've got three glue pellets in there and then i'm gonna take my air torch again heat up the bottom of the pad cup and if you guys saw our clarinet video uh what a couple weeks ago a few weeks ago the reason i'm heating up the back is to make sure that when i change the direction here the pellets don't fly all over the place so you're gonna heat that pad cup up so that glue actually sticks in there if you use that air torch you're just gonna blow blue pellets around your shell nobody likes that nope that's why we can't have nice things that's right so what i if you saw real quick what i did when i put the pad in there is i gave it a little bit of a twist the reason i do that is it helps distribute the glue evenly under the pad in the pad cup so at this point take our key take our rod and basically just put this back together yeah super super up close and personal okay yeah almost too personal so i will get as much out of the way as i can so you guys can see what's going on so now you're just installing the key back on and then i will get that back on there and then then the other thing i'm going to want to do is my with my spring hook here make sure that the spring is back on the key to engage the spring back on yep so the key is actually working properly now at this point what i'm going to do is i'm going to check for leaks in two ways now i'm going to have my extra long leak light just because i like the i like the long leak light you can use the shorter one if you want it is not a problem so i will have the leak light by that key and i will do the super close up so you can kind of see what's going on here ultra close up we're going to pull that out so there's no glare in there so if you see it i mean it's hard to see but i can tell and i can just feel it actually that there's a little bit of a leak on there so i'm going to figure out what side that it's on and it looks like yeah so if i want to go down on this side again it's on this sorry i will use something smaller than my fat finger it's on this side of the pad cup okay so what i want to end up doing is take the air torch again just heat up that pad cup and again just like leveling any saxophone pad any clarinet pad same idea just keep that glue up that adhesive behind it so you can actually go in and then just take then just take a regular pad slick and then i'm basically just gonna i'll say push it off to the side and making sure that it that it gets the level um if anybody's wondering about ironing pads or anything else on the trio keys um you actually don't have to on these because the heat from the from whether it be your torch or your air torch that heats up the side of the pad cup is enough to pull the skin on the side taut so there's no wrinkles or anything on on the pad itself i guess when we get into installing the pants that are held in by washers and screws we're going to talk a little bit more about those correct so if we're going to go super close up again and kind of show you that again if you can see it i know it's a little hard to see so now that is sealed it actually feels very solid and then on this point you are good to go yeah very cool that's essentially what you do to install pads on a flute for the glued one yes absolutely talk about the glue uh i do have a quick question would you ever use shellac i know you think you know working with saxophone pads we use schlock quite a bit is it something that you could use on flute absolutely um again the reason i'm using glue the type of blue that i'm using right now is that it's very very easy to use but there is zero there's nothing wrong with using slack sometimes even with like clarinets and stuff for higher end or pro work i personally actually like to use it too just it's it's more of a feel thing sure so but yeah absolutely fantastic so we just went over pads that are glued in now i'm going to talk a little bit about uh pads that are not glued yeah and ones that are held in by washers and screws now uh leroy what what pads are those on the flute that are held in by washer washers and stuff pretty much everything else so the so the sea the one i replaced and the two trills are held with the glue everything else is held in with a washer or some sort of grommet sure absolutely now i know dealing with pads that are held in by washers and screws that there are shims and this is one of those it really is like opening pandora's box or a can of worms uh it is it is quite a bit involved dealing with shims how can we just simplify that uh for the people watching at home and you know as far as sure whole shims partial shims what's your take on chance okay the hopefully the easiest and best way i can explain that is um for whole shims you want to use whole shims when you're trying to level the pad uh and adjust your pad protrusion as relating it to the tone hole on the body once you get that going you really shouldn't need a whole shim to also take out leaks because at that point the whole shims again are for adjustment this way to the body partial shims are to help take the leaks out of the actual pad to the tone hole because again pads aren't perfect horns aren't perfect so you have to go in there and these again shim partial shim to get those leaks out okay very nice all right well let's let's i guess get into it here yeah uh we'll do some some pad removing or at least key removing so you can see so i'm going to get that close over here again so i'm going to remove this key section right here and i'm going to be working on the a pad right here which i like to call it the fancy pen and then i actually like to double duty my screwdriver is i'll just take the the blade because it is thin and just help help myself take the take the washer off and then i will put that over here for right now and then i will take pad prick or screwdriver at this point because this pad you're removing it and replacing it for this instance so you really don't care if you i'll say destroy it so it doesn't really matter too much pop that back so we're gonna take that out of there again it should just come out because again they're not already they're not glued they're not glued in pop right i have taken this pad out before just to make sure uh everything was good to go in this package but i want you to look at one thing here so that shim that white part in the back there that is actually a paper shim if you look really carefully there's a mark on that shim right on the back so i actually put that in there with just a regular which is a regular old pen what this what this does and what it'll help you do is when you're shimming you want to try to eliminate as many variables as you can when you're taking pads out and putting stuff in so this mark right there will tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt which way that shim goes back in there if it falls out or whatever when you're putting stuff back in get that orientation correct i'm making those correct so what i'm going to do now is i've these pads here are actually two different thicknesses i've got 2.9 and i've got 2.7 and you might be wondering why i've got two different thicknesses and it's kind of what i said before it's all about pad protrusion making sure that the key and the pad hit level with the body sometimes different brands have different thicknesses or do or pad pad cup depths usually what you want to do is the shims that are in there you're going to want to dump those out and start from scratch if you can some people like to have at least one shim in there it's a pretty it's it's a personal preference sometimes and for student flutes it doesn't matter too much if you have a starting shim so i'm going to start out with the 2 9 and a bare pad cup and then what i'm also going to do is thinking ahead i'm going to take my pen put a tiny little mark on the pad and the reason it's so small and the reason it's where it's at is one again that mark will help tell me where the pad arm is so so as you can see it's a really small line lining up with the key arm and the reason i have it so small is if you look at the the b flat head right next to it the washer is a certain diameter i do it small so the washer actually covers up that mark so when the player picks it up they don't see that you've been marking up stuff or doing anything weird but for repair technicians it is a great way and a very useful tool to help line up pads and to help you with the partial shimming process so at this point i'm just going to take that screw and tighten it oh we can do that so if you look really carefully actually you know what let's do the let's do the super extreme close-up again and we'll that might be better if you look really carefully it's hard to tell but there are some wrinkles in that pad just trying to get the shine off of it there we go see the wrinkles in that pad you kind of want to get those out of there um and unlike the glued ones obviously we're not heating up the pad cup right because there's no glue so that's where that's where this little cool tool comes in this is a pad iron it's got two sides on it our our particular pad iron has two different sizes which is very useful this side here is the bigger the sides sizes that covers pretty much any normal stack size or anything on the foot joint the smaller side is actually very useful for some more modern flutes and brands like yamaha and jupiter where the thumb key and the g-sharp key are smaller so this particular one would actually hit the side of the key not allowing you to iron properly that's where the small one comes in so but this time we're going to use the regular size one and then we got a little cup of water right here we're just going to put a little bit of water on there wipe that off and then i'm going to heat this up you can do this two ways you can either use your air torch which is totally acceptable and very doable or you can use a hand torch just for time purposes i'm going to use a torch because it's a lot faster do that and then a way to test that yep and the way to test it to see if it's too hot this part of your hand is very sensitive so if you can touch it but you can still feel warm you're good if you can't if you touch it and you feel like you're basically branding yourself it is too hot we'll do that double check it and we're good now what happens leroy if you get that iron too hot good question i will i will take this other pad you want to do extreme close-up for me real quick so this pad right here there is a tear on the bottom here right there on the bottom oops i can't do this just right so right there on the bottom there's a tear you can kind of see it what i'm going to do is i'm going to overheat this pad and what it's going to end up doing is it's going to basically stretch the stretch the skin so much that it's gonna tear it so i'm going to wet that really quick so this is basically what not to do yes this is the definitely what not to see what he's doing now don't do this so let's just he's really going to heat that up so i'm just going to lay on this for i don't know until i feel that it's hot and i know it's hot now so and then oh yeah there we are that's kind of spring plus so so it did a couple things here it burnt it it burned the skin because it was so hot and then on top of that if you look really carefully here on a scorching so there on this side it actually pulled the skin from underneath the washer so there is a there that is that again making sure that that pad iron is not extremely hot is really important because stuff like that will have those and not here with us it gives off a lovely smell as well and yeah just burns old flute pad which is just a lovely scent it's kind of like burning your arm hair it's a lovely smell so at this point i've ironed i have correctly ironed the pad that i actually that i'm installing so i will take it back to the instrument and then reinstalling the key then i'm reinstalling the check for leaks correct i guess i can prop this with what are you going to be using to actually check for things it's a really good question and i'm actually going to be using two things i'm going to be using a leak light and a feeler gauge okay so leak light feeler gauge so and some people might want to know why and as i'm doing this i will explain as best as i possibly can while the leak light is great it also is hard to see certain things especially on on the back side of the keys because there's a lot of if you see this if you're trying to find the leak back here there's a lot of rods and a lot of stuff that kind of gets in your way of line of sight so unfortunately you can miss a leak or if there's something in the front or on the side it actually it actually could give you a i'll say a deceptive seal did somebody say deceptive seal oh oh there it is right there folks to set the seal yeah you got to watch out for those we talked about that last week yeah and um those happen on any on every instrument flute clarinet saxophone so it's really good to not only use a light but a feeler gauge to help you find those triangles especially little leaks that you may not be able to see all your base so what i'm going to do now is i'm looking at this and actually i can i can already see where it's at just because it actually is glaringly um apparent but the cool thing is so we're going to go extreme close up here so we can kind of so i can kind of show you guys what's going on so the feel of it is actually pretty good front to back we're pretty good but side to side it's hard to see it especially because i'm using my thumb but if you look really carefully there toward this side of the pad there's a little bit of light coming out if you look really carefully so we got a leak we got to take that so we got a leak so many of you are probably wondering how do we get that out of there especially if there's no glue on there well this is where the partial shim stuff is very very cool so what what what i like to do that has worked well for me for a very long time is i will again keep the leak light in there i will grab a sharpie and my peeler gauge and then what i'll end up doing is i will push the pad down until i can feel it start to not grab so right there kind of around like between five and six o'clock i will actually take this sharpie and actually mark the key itself don't worry i will i will tell you the cool and easy trick to get that mark off of there so no one will ever know right just file it right off yep file it and buff it so i'm gonna go around until until i feel it grab again and i can feel it grab right around looks like around two o'clock so mark right around in that area so as you can see i've marked that little area that's actually not grabbing and then you can do you can do one you can do a few different ways here i've i've actually done this a long time and i can i'll say cheat with my eyes and kind of guess what thickness of shim that i would use if you want something a little more definitive or if you're learning how to do this um it's exactly what i did when i was learning as well you can get like a feeler gauge assortment kit or whatever i know the one we sell has a couple different sticks on it and you can put different thicknesses of shimmy material on there and what you can do is for to check for the leaks use the this particular one is the silver so that's half thousands so super thin and then you can put one on there so like one thousands two thousand three thousands and then check it and then when it starts to grab that would be the shim that you would wanna take and put in there as the partial okay very nice so in this case i am guesstimating that it's that it's a that it's a two thousands so what i'll do is i'll put two dots on there to tell me that it's two thousands and the reason i do that for this one obviously we already know because it's one pad but if you're going through like the whole thing or doing multiple pads multiple keys you can mark them off so you don't have to remember so if you look at it oh that's one one thousandths oh this is two that's three and it's an easy reference to go back when you're actually partial shimmy so at this point i will take that key back off take the key off yes shim correct area that you've marked correct and this is again where the um the marking of the pad is very very useful so you have that reference point of where to put the pad back to when you when you actually put the pad back in the pad cup so very gently i'm going to remove that pad so i'm going to remove this out of the way and kind of do this instead so this and because i have fat fingers i like to use tweezers for little small things it it helps with just about everything so usually standard i'll say these are plastic shims so usually the standard colors if you want to do close-up close-up would be the orange or the amber that's one thousandth this is the red that's two thousandths so and because i kind of because i know when i want to use the two thousands i just have that right there and then i've got little nifty scissors here and i will basically turn it over and i basically just as best i can guesstimate the size of the shim and then what i'll also do to make double sure i've got that going you can actually do that that's cool is i will hold it up to the key where the drawing is and hold that up to it and make sure that it's at least close you when you're when doing this you want to make sure that it's inside the lines a little bit and not outside the lines and not right at the lines because just like with everything if you put if you install a piece of something that's thicker than the back there's going to be it'll hit that part and then it's going to graduate in so if you put it right to the edge it's probably going to be high in those spots so you want to have it in just a little bit to make up for it to make up for that problem so and at this point to to make sure that if you take this thing apart and you need to add more shims there are a couple different methods to hold shins in place good fingernail clear fingernail polish if you feel the desire to have some cool color and make your stamp make your staple on it you're all good i like clear it's it's clean and simple also key oil believe it or not if you're using strictly and only plastic shims this is an awesome go-to mainly because it will hold the shim in place but it won't glue it in place and it won't do anything weird to the shim this particular time because it's actually going on the pad cup itself i'm going to use this to make sure that it actually stays in place so i'll double check my side that it goes on wipe the excess off put just a teeny teeny bit on there whoops yeah i'll go there and you can see it's just it's hard to see it let's see those two little drops and that's actually sometimes a little bit too much so i'm going to go on my rag just kind of dab that off just a little bit and then make double sure what side that i'm going on and then install it on that side if you look so there so there's the mark it's hard to see it so you can see the sharpie mark and there's the shim on the inside the other thing i like to do is i will actually use the edge the edge of the tweezer hold it up to the edge of the mark and make sure that i'm actually in the ballpark if i'm not i just move it then i'll do the same thing do it do it so now we're actually in the ballpark of where we're at at this point we're going to take that pad and then reinstall it make sure that it's aligned make sure that your pen mark is lined up to the to the pad arm get your screwdriver put that back together and you don't have to over tighten them tighten them just enough that it'll hold the pad on there don't over tighten it because that'll actually squish the pad it'll make it not flat and all kinds of weird stuff happens that's not that's that's not positive as far as getting getting the flu pad on there so you're re-establing we're gonna check that that area that was that was light that you put the ship in yes um how are you going to check i am going to check it again with the league light and a fueler gauge doing it both check double check double checking second check yep and there are plenty of times when you have to kind of go back and forth where if i put this in here it may not it may still have a leak in it somewhere or there may still be a leak on the same side and it's a back and forth process it's never there's never def anything definitive about shimmy which is kind of a drag but the more you do it the easier it gets and i think i got a little lucky on this one and it's done yep it's a lit it's it's a little bit light but it actually is grabbing so that's a huge plus so what i would probably do is i would probably take this back off put a 1 000 shim in there and then i would probably be 100 done with that pad very cool awesome and you might be wondering oh my god we marked these keys how are we going to get that off of there super easy super simple uh if you have either isopropyl alcohol or denature alcohol or something like that on your bench put a little bit on a cloth wipe it right off no one will ever know it doesn't mess up the finish it doesn't mar the silver doesn't mess up the nickel so you're good to go very nice cool thank you so much a couple quick questions here absolutely um for my own personal uh amusement here is um can you use a leak tester on a flute that's a great question and yes you can okay um the only reason i didn't use it here is one just for time the other thing is is um it would be the final step to make double sure that you didn't miss any leaks it doesn't tell you where the leak is it tells you if there's a leak so the cool thing is if you're using the leak light and the feeler gauge and it feel looks and feels good if you want to make double sure you didn't miss anything put that leak tester in there and that will tell no lies and that will tell you for sure very nice cool thank you uh another question yes again from my own personal use uh is me being a saxophone guy uh dealing with you know putting shellac behind pads why don't you use shellac on all the pads it's actually a really good question and not to try to sound like a cop-out answer it's just the way the flute is designed and the size and thickness of the pads and everything else it unfortunately just doesn't work um for a lot of reasons but again not to skirt the question it just doesn't work okay very nice uh you talked about shims we talked about paper or uh versus plastic uh what do you personally prefer leroy paper or plastic um i'm good actually with both um if i had if i'm if i'm working on a student flute and i have the choice of both i will pick paper uh mainly because of cost that's the only reason but cheaper than a little bit cheaper yeah i know the ones we carry are all or the or the plastic ones and a lot of it is just because it's a high quality product and that's and that's what we have and that's what i was using today nice uh one more question and this may be a loaded question is how do we level you know oh man you know i think that might be uh another another day i think yeah i think we're planning on just going to be part two of our two-part series uh padding open-hole yes absolutely nice we're working on that uh i think that is about it unless you have anything else to add ah i don't think so okay cool thank you leroy um so again a couple things could we have coming up tomorrow folks i am doing a um saxophone key fitting day course uh if there's still a little bit of time left to sign up five o'clock today if you sign up you'll be in for the class tomorrow yeah uh that's going on all day we also have coming up on july 27th we have a fluke basics course it's great when you use brass text that need to bone up on your flute repair uh or hobbyist uh even band directors that want to understand absolutely basic flute repair um we also have a another day course uh coming up on august 19th and this is going to be clarinet tenants leaving yes okay so that'll be another great course so uh fantastic all right thanks everybody this is our penn state wisdom series for tips tricks uh and techniques for the advantage and prepare world make sure you like subscribe feel free to share this video as well and i think until next time take away leroy happy repair you

Channel: MusicMedic.com

Views: 241

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: saxophone, repair, saxophone repair, repair supplies, sax, pivot screws, vintage saxophone, mark vi, selmer, conn, martin, king, true taper, false taper, solder, soldering, heat, flux, torch, soft solder, hard solder, brazing, fire, clarinet, clarinet pad cup, measuring clarinet, clarinet pads, clarinet repar, clarinet key repair, clarinet ring keys, dent, saxophone dent, dent mandrel, roopads, kangaroo, register key, clarinet key

Id: aQt5h8pHw9Y

Length: 34min 7sec (2047 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 21 2021