Dettloff Music and Repair

I think it’s wonderful that the threaded nubs inside of flute keys to hold pads in are called spuds. About half of the spuds on this flute had been threaded and the other half weren’t. How odd! I’ll be threading all of them so they can hold pads in with a washer and screw instead of a plastic snap.

To thread these, first I faced the spud with a rotating cutter tool much like a hinge tube shortener, with a very cool attachment which sits on the skirt of the key cup to ensure the tool stays perfectly perpendicular to the key cup.

Then I used a tap to cut the threads, using the same attachment. Voila! It’s almost like magic the way these come out of the tool with threads.