Restorations
I enjoy doing restoration work on vintage wooden flutes, especially those by the popular firms of Rudall/Rose/Carte, Hudson, Siccama, Boosey, Hawkes, but also the less known makers like Monzani/Hill, Goulding & D'Alamaine, Potter, Parker, Fentum, and more.
Beside the general work of making an old flute playable again, which includes re-humidifying, fitting new springs and pads, closing cracks and re-oiling, I also work on bringing old flutes into modern tuning. It has to be distinguished between permanent and non-permanent fixes here - I only do permanent fixes on flutes that are unplayable otherwise or don't have a historic significance.
I generally do repair work on wooden flutes, both vintage and from other makers. Please inquire.
Photo Gallery
From time to time I'll publish photo stores of restored flutes here.
Jordan Wainwright, about 1840
I bought this instrument from an antique dealer in London. There are very few Jordan Wainwright flutes known to exist today, besides this one I know of a one-keyed baroque flute in England and another eight-keyed one in Australia. Wainwright used to be making flutes in England until the mid 1840s and then emigrated to Australia, probably to become Down Under's first flute maker.
On this flute, I repaired one crack in the headjoint and two barrel cracks, re-padded and fitted new bronze springs to all keys, re-polished the keys, humidified the timber and gave it a good oiling, and (non-permanently) corrected the tuning to fit into modern a=440Hz music.
