Help Please

Irish Flute
1

I have a high school student who has contacted me for help in making a flute for a school project. I’m thinking that Jem Hammond might be the perfect one to address these questions, as I am afraid that I might not have the patience to get past the first question.

"Alright, here are the questions. You might actually answer more than one in a single answer as some questions are partly repetitive, some are just more precise.

About the mouth hole :

  1. What are the different shapes of mouth holes ?
  2. How does the shape influences the tone, the volume and the pitch of the flute ?
  3. What should be the distance between the mouth hole and the cork ?
  4. How does the cork influences the overall quality of the instrument ?

About the making of the flute :

  1. I’m planning to build a 3-piece flute. How should I make the joints between the pieces without breaking the wood or making it too fragile ?
  2. Should the joints be thick ?
  3. Considering the joints, should the walls of the flute be thick ? What is the ideal thickness ?
  4. For a tuning slide, what material should I use ? Metal or wood ?
  5. Can the joint between the head part and the body serve as a tuning slide ?
  6. I will have to make a cylindrical flute. How does this shape influences the overall quality of the flute ?

I’m sure it will greatly help me =) As your flutes are in PVC, maybe you won’t be able to answer some questions but I’m asking in case you would know."

Thanks in advance for your help.

2

Wow, that’s a pretty ambitious project for a high school student. Although, I’ve seen some pretty talented and ambitious high school students. I find this set of videos fascinating to watch. They are pretty detailed and the equipment and skills may be beyond his reach but it can’t hurt to check them out:

http://www.youtube.com/user/thomasclarkguitars#p/u

Regards,

Kirk

3

Most people assume they can get their questions answered and then make a single flute based on “facts”. It doesn’t work that way. Like anything musical it requires practice and learning curve. And making several flutes over time, each one trying something different based on what worked or didn’t work before. This is how I have approached my flute making from the start.

Your student might start with a few flute making guides such as Mark shepard’s book:
http://www.amazon.com/Simple-Flutes-Homemade-Instruments-Children/dp/0938497189/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=magazines&qid=1257693177&sr=8-2

The book Amateur Wind Instrument Maker might also be helpful, if your student wants to actually turn a flute.

Casey

4

Hi Doug, not sure how much help I can be to someone setting about turning a wooden tube!!! I’ve zero experience of such. Input from the likes of Casey is invaluable!

Certainly answers on things like wood tolerances for turning sockets and tenons etc would come best from an experienced source - though examination of a bunch of good examples in the flesh would be wise also - so perhaps your youngster should try (if at all possible) to attend a session where there are some flutes to examine and even measure, with their owners’ permission - and a range of modern-made and antiques to survey.

I daresay I could make useful comments to at least some of the points of principle in the series of questions, but answers from a proper maker would be better. Also it would be sensible to point the chap towards some thorough general reading, on-line and other wise, such as Terry McGee’s website (e.g. on tenons & tuning slides, but much else), Rick Wilson’s one (history of flutes & how they work/why they developed as they have done and a scan of design options & possibilities) and the U of NSW website on how woodwinds work… Plus reading Rockstro and Bohm…

OK, OK, the last two may be suggesting a bit too much! But you can’t substitute for understanding the whys and wherefors of what you may be trying to do.

I’ve no time just now to do a run through of answers/suggestions, but will try to give it some time during the next week.

Also suggest he joins this forum and asks his own questions and also maybe the Flute Makers’ forum that gets referred to here occasionally - I don’t frequent that myself, so don’t have the link for it. Maybe there are proper engineering plans available for something like what he wants to make, or at least ones that might be adapted?

Lastly, wasn’t it Dave Swindler who was making Bohm-tubed (“parabolic” head plus cylindrical body) keyless flutes? I seem to recall him having dropped off the scene due to health problems, but if he can be contacted, he will have trodden much of the relevant ground and would be best placed to advise.

Last but by no means least, if this student is absolutely limited by the technology available to him to turning cylindrical tubes, he will have to use a Tipple-Fajardo wedge in the head to simulate a Bohm taper - unless he wants to make a copy of a Renaissance flute (I’m sure there must be plans for such available)!

5

Thank you for the replies. I sent the C & F link to Tommy, and I hope that it is helpful. My attitude is the same as Casey Burns. I recommended that Tommy start with a one-piece flute. It is a little much to think about making a 3-piece wooden flute with no prior experience. If he has enough interest, this will carry him forward in the art of flutemaking. What Casey was describing is the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning, I do believe. While it is necessary to deduce by collecting facts, it is also just as important to use the trial and error method, always looking for an improvement.

6

I think there was a little misunderstanding in regards of my message. I totally understand the fact that making a musical instrument requires much more than single bits of knowledge and a piece of wood. The goal of my project is not to make a perfect instrument, but to base myself on the experience of others to try and make something, and learn something in the end. I may mess up everything and have to start again a few times, I will also have to test it on cheap material like PVC first, but I have the whole year to do the best I can. By asking these questions, I didnt want anyone to write books about them, I only wanted a few guidelines to put me on the right track.

In short, my goal is not to make a perfect flute, but to learn something out of the process, and part of it comes from you, flutemakers.

7

Tommy, welcome aboard, both to C&F specifically and to the flute obsession generally! Your response suggest you have a very sensible attitude to approaching the task you have chosen. I hope some of the links I gave above will set you off towards your goal. Reading Doug’s DIY pages (and also Guido Gonzato’s similar ones for whistles) will serve you well for getting started with pre-extruded tube experiments - a good place to start. It seems to me that moving forward from that might logically take you to an all-cylinder one-piece Renaissance type wooden flute - so worth reading up on those from the historical and musical angles and seeing if you can find plans for making one. Moving beyond that may not even be necessary.