well I don’t have the knowledge to explain the acoustics of it but, unless my ears are playing tricks, Jon’s rough guide of 19mm radically improves the lower end on my Metzler(?) 8 key. I’ve been working on my embouchre to find more power in the weak low D the past few days. Just tried pulling the cork out to 19mm and now I can cran it. Interesting! Maybe it’s psychological? It’s a lot further out than the screw adjustment would suggest, just about as far as it will go (although perhaps the cork is too long).
Guess it won’t work for all, but a good tip nonetheless
Mark, Chris Wilkes recommends about 21-22mm back from embouchure centre, which enriches the low register (at some expense to the ease and clarity of the 3rd, but as we mostly don’t go there…) It doesn’t make too much of a difference to the octave tuning either, which is the primary purpose of the adjustable stopper. I suspect I’d have set he stopper in that “nach Metzler” ( ) of yours to about the rule of thumb 19mm when we worked on it together last summer…
I agree with Denny on this on, however, tonight is a no alcohol night while I try to get over the flu. I don’t agree with Kirk about throwing away wine corks. Of course, they can be used for flute stoppers, but if you drink enough bottles of the stuff, you can begin to think about about making end tables or maybe a whole acoustic wall in your studio. Saving wine corks is a whole lot more satisfying than collecting used beer cans. At a four to one ratio of beer cans or bottles to wine bottles/corks, based on the alcohol content alone, my accumulation of wine corks and empties isn’t quite so frightening.
If the people throwing away wine corks could throw them far enough and in the right direction, they might land here…and I could be putting them into flutes …I seem to be only able to find conical corks here – have to reshape them at the same time as sanding them down! Still much quicker than the delrin stoppers with rubber O-ring…
I set them at 20mm back in the conical flutes and 17mm in the Boehm type . There seems to be more discussion of the cork position in the conical flute than in the Boehm – likely due to the much more frequent need for the 3rd octave in the latter which doesn’t leave much option. I’d say cork position in the conicals could be another of those player dependent issues, like the preference for a long or a short foot for example.
Garry, you can buy used wine corks on ebay, bags of 'em, more than you will ever need. However, unless you are lucky it is hard to find corks that are the perfect diameter for the bores of the flutes that you are making. I have some rasp-type files that I use to remove cork to size the cork for the flute bore. Sanding paddles are used for final sanding of the corks. By the way, one good wine cork will make three flute stoppers with a half inch thickness, so unless you make a lot of flutes, you don’t need many corks. My own cork to flute ratio is growing every day based on my own consumption of wine for dinner.
…And you’d think conical corks would be good for conical flutes!..
They’re not actually a problem to sand down though. I have a little jig which I use to hold them between centres on the lathe and then it’s just a matter of sanding them down with a strip of sandpaper – and knowing when to stop before they get too small! I have a few of those around…I’ve been mostly using the delrin stopper with rubber O-ring though.
My personal advise is to keep away from wine corks and stick to champaign and special beer corks. They don’t contain an opener hole, since you pop them, and if you make your own flutes, their basic shape can provide a classy crown on an otherwise blatantly cheap stick of PVC. I don’t finish my flutes as nicely as Doug does, so it helps a lot if the crown tells you that the makers are called “Moet & Chandon” or -ever so applicable- “Piper Heidsieck”.
(A little word of warning: if you use a cork freshly off of a Kriekenbeer, expect it to smell nasty at first, and to shrink more later. It can mask bad flute odour, but only by means of another bad odour.)
The cork in my flute fell out. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I put it back in. I had no idea how far to push it, so I pushed very gently until it stopped. How do you measure it to make sure it’s the right amount in? Do you measure how long the cork is and then add that to how far between the end of the cork and the opening at the top? Or is the 23mm or whatever from the top of the cork to the top of the flute?
I played the flute into Garage Band with the tuner control set to see if I ruined anything. It seemed in tune close enough according to the tuner. But to my ear the upper register sounds better than the lower one. I’m not sure my ear is to be trusted, however.
The cork seems awfully loose. It’s the second time it has fallen out. Is there anything I should/can do to get the cork to stay in?
The 23mm measurement is from the center of the embouchure to the face of the cork. If you take a dowel and measure from the edge and mark a line at 23mm, when you insert the dowel you should see that line in the center of the embouchure hole when it’s touching the face of the cork; if not, move it until you do.
If it keeps falling out you may want to contact Casey to see what he recommends. If I remember correctly, he uses a piece of wood wrapped with thread. You may just need to add more thread to it, but contact him. Good luck.
) of yours to about the rule of thumb 19mm when we worked on it together last summer…