It’s not well known that Rose’s 1847 patent, in which he patents Boehm’s new-fangled cylindrical flute, also included a conical flute, with some very interesting features. As you’ll see however, even with the evidence in front of you, it’s not perfectly clear what Rose was up to. Was this how Rose imagined his Perfected era flute might look?
http://www.mcgee-flutes.com/Rose1847patent.htm
Terry
Interesting looking flute, I like the idea of tuning slides on all the joints, but Like you said, there would be a cracking problem. I wonder why the Pratten style ring on the foot was so popular? It seems to be more vulnerable with wood exposed on the end. If I ever see one on eBay I will let you know!
Indeed, and it’s certainly more effort to do. I think I prefer the old way, at both ends!
If I ever see one on eBay I will let you know!
Yes, please. Of course, I might be too speechless to bid!
Terry
It may be that he intended the conical tuning slides as a joke - given the environment of Rockstro vs. Boehm etc. and how seriously everyone may have felt back then. Or maybe it was just poor draughtsmanship.
I heard about a patent on “Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell Me!” today, that might illustrate my point (this patent really does exist):
http://www.google.com/patents?id=hhYJAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4#v=onepage&q&f=false
Casey
It’s lo-og, lo-og
It’s big
It’s heavy
It’s wood
It’s lo-og
Lo-og
It’s better than bad
It’s good!
My favourite ‘advert’ ever.
I think the latter, but to be fair, the scale of the images wouldn’t really allow you to draw the tuning slides clearly. A fine nib, but not that fine!
I heard about a patent on “Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell Me!” today, that might illustrate my point (this patent really does exist):
http://www.google.com/patents?id=hhYJAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4#v=onepage&q&f=false
Sigh. Isn’t it always the way. The more foolish the notion, the more words get spent on it. If only our 19th century predecessors had waxed half so lyrical, we might have half an idea of what they were on about!
Terry
You could use delrin to get round the metal/wood splitting problem - assuming you wanted a flute to be able to cover a wider range of pitches, as they did back then.
Instead of using metal slides at each tenon, you could then also turn all three delrin tenons thin enough to be used as short slides, the same way as is done for the top tenon of a delrin flute without a metal slide nowadays.
Of course, since you can’t turn a delrin tenon to be as thin-walled as a metal slide tube, you wouldn’t be able to pull those delrin sliding tenons out as far without creating significant gaps in the bore and the tuning and sounding problems associated with that, so the flute wouldn’t have as wide a range of pitch as thin-walled metal tubes would allow. Unless you wanted to include tuning rings at each tenon…
With an integral delrin tenon/slide, the usual reaming should help with this
Garry
I think nowdays such a thing would make some sense only if the change in pitch could bring the flute up to Eb, which would be quite nice…
You’d still prefer to have the additional centre joint for decent tuning in both keys - D/Eb.
Garry
I agree, Gary. Rose’s three slides would be a good solution if you couldn’t predict the pitches you needed, which might well have been the case back then. But if you know the pitches , eg D and Eb at A=440, then it would be more convenient to have two dedicated corps de rechange. Although, in a keyed flute that also means three more keys, which is probably why corps de rechange became unpopular and they resorted to the long tuning slide!
A reminder to all that my interpretation of Rose’s drawing is purely speculative, and the stuff about the C vent is really confusing. So an opportunity here for lateral thinkers to come up with more likely explanations. I’m more interested in truth than triumph!
Terry