Since Colin Goldie showed me Bamboo Flutes I’m simply in love with those flutes as I love the asian touch you can hear in their sound (personally I only got one Flute of this kind atm).
My main Problem while trying to make Bamboo flutes is the strong tendency of the Bamboo to crack while drilling/cutting it,does anybody know a way to prevent this ?
Last year I found a very interesting way to avoid drilling the holes : burning them.I found a flutemakerhttp://www.eriktheflutemaker.com/Flute_making_kit.htm
that burns them with an iron and he’s selling this as a kit. sadly he discontinued to vend this kit.
Anybody who got an idea where to get those irons to burn the holes??
The thread isn’t wrapped until after the holes are burnt into the tube.
If you go to one of my posts in this other topic
you will find notes and videos about a North Indian bansuri maker at his work.
Erik the Flutemaker used to sell a “kit” on his website. But I just checked and it has been discontinued. http://www.eriktheflutemaker.com/Flute_making_kit.htmUnderstandably, the idea of a bunch of Boy Scouts running around with Red-Hot irons bothers me. Though it does resemble their Marshmallow Roasts!
Or if you would like to drill the holes, try bits with brad-points (or lip and spur) and a drill press.
The flute making kit on Erik the Flutemaker’s website is Temporarily Discontinued. I contacted him and he said they’ve made footage for a new DVD:‘Bamboo Flutemaking 101’. The footage is now in hands of his videographer and it shouldn’t take too long before the DVD is ready. The price of this kit was $399, but he said he’d cut that price down.
Just received another mail from Erik. He hopes the DVD comes out soon, but his videographer is very busy at the moment. And with the ‘old’ flute making kit you would get 10 masters:
3 Side blown Majors,
3 Side blown Minors,
2 Side blown Arabian,
1 Side blown Oriental Pentatonic,
1 Side blown Japanese Kokin (modified)
And bamboo to make 20 flutes (2 of each i suppose)
But with the new set you can select your own masters (could be more or less then ten, all your own choice) And he’ll send you as many blanks for those masters as you want, so you can put together your own flute building set now to make all the flutes you wanted to make
The Indian bansuri maker than Talasiga referenced seems to have only three iron pokers that he is using in the flute-making video. These are iron rods that have been shaped so that they have a tapered point. It seems to me that these would be very simple to make with a bench grinder. I have tried doing this myself. With a tapered point you can control the diameter of the hole by how far you insert the tapered point. Also bansuri holes are often oval, if I recall correctly. First, the smaller round finger holes are poked into the bamboo with the hot poker. Then, as you are bringing the hole up to pitch, you move the poker from side to side to elongate the hole. This also serves to undercut the finger holes. Final tuning and shaping of the hole is then done with hand files, as shown in the bansuri-making video.
I notice that the Indian bansuri maker is not using any ventilation when he is burning in the hole. When I did this, I was nearly overcome with the burning bamboo smell. Bamboo flute maker, Billy Miller, does his burning in of the holes in a ventilated chamber so that the burning bamboo smell can exhausted. I think that his website Windward Flutes is still under construction.
Heh. That was pretty fun to read up on and listen to. My son plays clarinet and I am going to see if he is interested in trying one of these. Looks like fun. I prefer the flute myself.
