Since Tommy showed off his flute-making machine, I decided to post a photo of mine. I might add that I was very impressed with Casey’s end cap machine, although it looks a little heavy-duty, IMO.
When I first started to make two-piece, tunable flutes from pvc pipe, I asked Ralph Sweet for assistance. He told me to become friends with a good machinist and to have him make some boring tools for me. Being stubborn, I didn’t follow Ralph’s good advice. Instead, I came up with my own solution, which I call the “broom-handle solution”. I use that descriptive term because I use part of an old broom handle to act as a pilot to guide the cutting tool as I am boring in the pipe. The cutting tool is a $2 wood bit that I have shaped to size on a bench grinder. And the main secret to it all is the use of masking tape to act as a spacer between the pilot and the bore wall, since every piece of pvc pipe will vary in internal diameter and roundness. A little K-Y jelly helps here, as well. The photo shows the setup to bore a 2 inch deep socket in the pipe to accept a copper nipple for a headjoint. I use the same setup for my current flutes to drill a socket in the flute body to accept a machined tenon on the headjoint.
Yes, at the time that this photo was taken I was using violin spool clamps that I had made for gluing violin seams. I no longer am using these. Instead, I am using the same wing nuts but with four hand-adjustable bolts that come with the table vise. By the way, Sears recently had this whole setup for sale at $89.
On thing to consider, if you try doing this, is that it is important for the pipe you are boring to be perfectly inline with the boring tool. I use a bubble level on the drill press support column and the pvc pipe to accomplish this.
I spotted this drill press machinist’s vice in the Rockler catalog, and thought it might be handy for this type of operation for drilling out the flute body, what do you think?:
The small table vise that I show in the photo came with the drill press. It is the perfect size to accomplish the task of boring flute bodies, although you do need to adjust the position of the stock manually. I leave one drill set just to bore with, so I don’t need to make adjustments all the time. I also have a large compound table vise, similar to the Rockler that you refer too. I think that it would work best on a larger, floor-mounted drill press, like the one in the Rockler photo. The one that I have is heavy and awkward, so I don’t use it on my table-mounted, 9" drill press.
