Main Discussion Area > Primitive Skills
Flute build along
Catahoula:
Hi,
Anything is toxic and I recommend wearing a mask when messing with it...not a household dusk mask but a N95 and above which you can find at Lowes and such...but the coffee grinder keeps the dust inside it...once it settles it is easy to pick up and doesn't produce too much floating around dust...I get my malichite at Michaels or Hobby Lobby...look in the bead section and read the label of the bag to make sure it is malichite or turquoise and not colored glass...catlenite or pipestone is also nice for inlay...(my spelling on all those is probably off)...lots of guys save the bandsaw dust from purple heart and ebony or Africanblackwood and use it for inlay too...If you got a crack then filling it in with something cool really shows it off (not just with flutes but with other art work too). If you live anywhere near Fort Walton Florida you can go to the Echoes Flute Festival or Melborne Fla the Native Rythyms festival and see lots of inlay in flutes...when I enter the flute makers contests at those festivals I enter branch flutes and have a hard time competing with some of the guys who inlay with jewels, gold, silver and such! Back to toxic...the thing that gets me (strangely enough) is red cedar...have to soak the sinuses in salt baths after just being near the the dust!...each person seems to have his or her on bugaboo...
Hope that helps...
Rand
Catahoulaflutes.com is my site...(note I don't sell flutes via the site and am not trying to promote myself)
stickbender:
Rand when is the festival in Melbourne?
Wayne
Michael C.:
Here is the flue I put a bone inlay on the sound edge trying out an idea that Wayne (stickbender) gave me. I also put some turquoise inlay with the bottom of the triangles indicating where the block should marry up to.
The air channel should be 3/8" wide 7/8" long and about 1/32" deep, you can either use a small file or carve it out with some flat edge razor or chisel. You will need to find the sweet spot by testing it out with whatever block you have made, it will be about 1 7/8ths" L x 3/4" W. Be careful to keep your flue area flat for about 2 1/2 to 3 1/2" long depending on what sort of totem you plan on making or just preference. I get sloppy sometimes when I get to this step and have to do some clean up. Just remember the more cautious you are the less you have to clean up :)
This shows the flue from the side, you can see how it remains flat.
You also want to get your root note at this point, I am shooting for a Gm so I will trim off 1/2 to 1" portions until I get what I need from the foot of the flute. I typically use a Korg tuner I think it's a ca 40, I can't find it to make sure. I have an app on my ipod that works with tuning a guitar, but sometimes it's sketchy with flutes. I got my root note so the next bit is going to be on how to determine where your holes are going to drilled.
Thanks for all of the gratitude and I am glad that you are all enjoying this as much as I enjoy sharing what I can.
Michael C.:
Here is a soundbyte of the root note at this point, it may shift a little as you're tuning your holes so keep that in mind. The first breath is the plain jane and the second breath is the all famous canyon reverb finegal.
http://www.sociallybroken.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/flute-root-note.mp3
stickbender:
Cool! 8) Sounds good. ;)
Wayne
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