infrequent contributor the the Whistle forum has crossed the Great Divide and needs a bit of assisitance from you guys in the Flute section. I am repairing a friends wooden flute after it was crushed in an arguement with a speaker stand.
One of the casualties of the arguement was one of the brass rings reinforcing the joints. I can’t believe that every flute maker turns his own rings ( i could be wrong though!) and therefore ask the question - can anyone point me in the right direction towards a supplier of said rings should one exist. I imagine that there are a number of different and standard diameters that most makers use as they all look pretty much the same to me!
Many thanks - you can reach me on here or directly through glebe_farm1(at)btinternet.com or through my website shown below
I think most make their own rings alright - I certainly make mine…though I suppose you could get them cast - not sure it would be worth that though. The ring you put on will need to have the same appearance as the others - same profile and width. It could be a flat ring or a D profile, for example.
I have a variety of tools here, some I made myself, specifically for turning and sizing rings for my flutes. Each ring needs to be the right size to fit the seat you turn into the body of the flute for it. I find it easiest to size the ring first and then turn the seat it needs. If the seat already exists, it’s a little bit more work. For brass rings, I use brass tubing of various diameters and with a specific wall thickness but you can also solder up strips of brass or silver to get the initial ring shape.
Basically, you need to first anneal the ring so that the metal is soft enough to allow you to stretch the ring to the right diameter on a triblet - a long cone-shaped tool, often of metal though not necessarily so for flute-making - hardwoods and delrin will work here.
A ring needs to be tight enough on a wooden flute that it supports the socket when the tenon is inserted but not so tight that it might cause the socket to deform. Making up just one ring for a specific seat on a flute if you weren’t already set up for it could be a bit of a project, though not at all impossible depending on what tools you have on hand.
Methinks you are right Gary. I have to make a ring for an existing seat so I will have my work cut out for sure. I can source some half round brass beading of the correct dimensions so with a little bit of effort to form the ring, a bit of judicious brazing and borrowing some techniques from the coopers - heating the ring to expand it and allowing it to cool over the mortise maybe I will get a result! We’ll see, I’ll llet you know how I get on.
If you can turn a taper on a 30cm (or so) piece of hardwood there, you can use it as a triblet to stretch the annealed ring to the required size. The ring just needs to easily go on the narrow end of the taper and the other wider end needs to be a larger diameter than the ring diameter you’re after.
(Edited:
Of course it doesn’t need to be anything like 30cm long just to do one specific ring! I said 30cm because that’s typically what I make them to be able to get a range of ring sizes. For one ring, it could be much shorter than that.)
Depending on what tools you have there, you can then push or carefully hammer the ring up along the triblet till it gets to the right size. When it gets near size, you’ll need to take it off regularly to test it in the seat on the flute - but it will be stuck on the triblet and it’s very easy to deform it while moving it up and down like this…I use thick-walled delrin tubes of appropriate diameter for this, with a thin slot cut in them lengthwise - gives them a little more range. The cylindrical end-facing of the tube pushing against the ring won’t deform it.
I use the tailstock on the lathe to do the pushing. It helps if the ring is a touch wider and thicker than what you need to go on the flute so that when it comes off the triblet at the right diameter, you’ve still got some “fat” on it allowing you to turn or file it down on the lathe and sand it to final size. Just easier to get a cleaner finish that way - which is partly why I prefer to use brass tubing to start with. But you can get the beading to work alright.