@Steampacket…Walking into President Bush’s office with a gun----it was an interesting day.
(and a proud moment, too)
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@Steampacket…Walking into President Bush’s office with a gun----it was an interesting day.
(and a proud moment, too)
Awesome, but weren’t you tempted to …
Was I tempted to do what???
Be careful…the Secret Service does not have a sense of humor. LOL!
“Was I tempted to do what???
Be careful…the Secret Service does not have a sense of humor. LOL!” Brian Prowerly
Were you not tempted to say “Go ahead, make my day” or “Do you feel lucky, Mr President?”
The SS have no power over here by the way 
How funny you should say that. When we went to make the presentation, he actually said, “Go ahead, make my day.”
Engine turned engraving rather than free-hand, but the bees knees and of course apt to “our” kind of flutes (and the source of Kevin’s examples up-thread): peruse Chris Wilkes’ website.
You can see David Migoya’s two Wilkes crown caps on Olwell flutes here and you can see my own Wilkes head with decorated crown alongside the original 1840s struck/pressed and engine turned Rudall & Rose Patent Head crown cap here on C&F.
Robert Bigio does some simple but attractive work on wooden crowns for Bohm flutes, e.g.
Then there’s always this exotic C19th English flute (click this link for more images):
and the famous all-ivory carved Rudall & Rose
and the lovely silver engraving plus cloisonné mother-of-pearl and ?turquoise/?faience on this C19th Austrian flute by Ziegler:
Bling bling!
(And we’ve thus far eschewed mention of the inimitable [I ardently hope and trust!] John Lunn! 
)
would’a been a shame to have left him out
… but in good taste.
Who, me? 
@jemtheflute…those are just beautiful! Thanks for sharing the pics and the links.
I’d like to get hands on one of them.
Give me some time…
Do you have any pull to hook him up with an engraving job for Carl XVI Gustaf?
But what to engrave? Maybe a set of commerative ABBA medallions! Talk about pride!
Sorry. I don’t have any pull with President Bush. Tell Carl XVI Gustaf I send my warmest regards.
I’m a huge ABBA fan myself. I listen to them everyday.
I meant that steampacket might get you the gustaf gig.
Ok 
“I meant that steampacket might get you the gustaf gig” oleorezinator.
I doubt the old king would go for it as republicans are the arch enemy of the monachy over here. Swedes, who can think, perceive Republicans in the US to be be ultra conservative, gun crazy, creationist loonys, whereas over here, Swedish Republicans want the king to step down from the throne
And now that this difference has been made clear, let’s move on.
Where were we, now? Ah, right…oooh. Sparkly flute bling.
“Sparkly flute bling”----I like it and apparently so does a few others—over 700 page views. WOW!
Don’t mean a thing
If it ain’t got that bling!
I confess looking at the pictures of your work makes my heart beat faster.
Must be some way to adapt this stuff to wooden flutes.
You know, Brian, to be honest, if you want to add decorative elements to flutes, IMO your considerable engraving is the business. Seriously, I think you could lose the crystals; they don’t showcase your real craft. My comment above was an attempt at bringing things back on-topic by using irony fired in a neutral direction. I’m not sure by your response if you understood that.
Don’t assume that 700+ views means everyone likes what they see; after all, one has to click to view, and that’s all it means. Then follows opinion, for better or worse. Aside from those who revisit threads simply because they want to keep tabs on developments for whatever reason (and each visit racks up another view on the count), statistically there will be people who view and re-view things they don’t like precisely because they don’t like them. And if I don’t, then you can take it to the bank that there’s no way I am alone. If there were an outpouring of unqualified appreciation for the direction you’re going with this, then you might be onto something with your assessment of what the view count means. But, really, there hasn’t been that outpouring. 700 views (actually, nigh unto 800 by now) with comparatively little comment says a lot of “No comment” to me. It also says that there are hot-button issues at play, and with every new post, people are checking in to see if there’s trouble. Personally, I see lot of the posted response here to be a matter of people bending over backwards to be nice, but careful etiquette is not the same as accolades. I’ve been a member here for nearly 10 years, and I think I’ve come to know most of my fellow Chiffers, and how they operate, pretty well.
That said, of course there will be those who do like your offerings to date, and good for them. But don’t entertain a mistaken estimate of that number based on a view count.
To repeat, I would prefer to see you concentrating on your engraving in decorating flutes, and keep it at that, for it’s the classier stuff by far, hands-down.
Nano nails it, pretty much, IMO. Brian, I’m afraid I find your crystal-mounted crowns rather “tacky” as we say in GB. They’re not as tasteless (IMO!!!) as the Lunn creations I referred to, but I wouldn’t want one on any flute of mine, even if they fitted. I suspect there’s probably a good market with teenage high school girl Bohm fluters as prizes for good grades etc.! Not many of us here qualify. 
Nothing wrong with trying to promote your product, but your efforts to sell that particular line may be more productive in other places than they are likely to be here. Know/learn your market! 
But we’re a friendly bunch and quite clearly many of us appreciate your engraving skills, so your time here is not by any means wasted.
BTW, Brian, I don’t have a photo to post at present, but I have a Rudall Carte cocuswood flute head with your kind of engraving in the “lip-plate” area - done direct in the wood, and very effective it is. I’ll post a pic when I get a chance.
By all means, I certainly appreciate and respect all comments/feedback/opinions.
For 25 years, I’ve been married to the most wonderful woman in the world, and she disagrees with me on a minute-by-minute basis. I fully expect differences. After all, if everyone thought like me, I’d never learn anything. LOL!
Some will find them “tacky”, some will see them as “treasure”. That’s the world and that’s life.
One of the biggest downsides to the photographs is to show them SOOooooo close up with professional lighting and a professional camera. The entire crown is only 3/4" in diameter. The gold and copper bands are just 0.012" (Twelve thousanths of an inch) in width.
They are displayed at probably more than double their real size and they come off as enormous. If you saw them at a normal viewing distance—arms length—they look somewhat diminished without losing their sparkle. The actual engraving near the top of the crown is barely discernable at a normal viewing distance.—enough of the tech stuff.
I understand what you are saying about misinterpreting the view count. I get it…Thanks.
Your remark about “Personally, I see lot of the posted response here to be a matter of people bending over backwards to be nice, but careful etiquette is not the same as accolades” sounds a bit intimidating. People only bend over backwards for so long. I get that too.
A good friend of mine once said, “The world would be a much better place with more beautiful things in it.”
That’s all I was trying to do.
BTW----You are a friendly bunch! Thanks for that too!