minstrel: Flute making

[david ball]

Rachel (and any other interested)

    Once I found out that Yamaha was making recorders out of PVC, and 
especially after owning a few of them, I had no doubts that PVC was a good 
material for wind instruments. For some time I have played about with the 
idea of making my own "simple system" flute, but could just not get the 
holes right. The other day I ran across this link
http://www.friendlyplumber.com/pipe_flute.html
And while it looks like all you have to do is follow directions, there is a 
bit more to it than that, though not much. Mostly I think it is that not all 
end caps are made the same, but the over all length seems to vary.  What I 
ended up doing was to cut it long (easier to shorten than to stretch later), 
slip on the end cap, give it a blow, read the note on my electronic guitar 
tuner ($14 or so at most music stores), and read the note it played. From 
there I carefully pruned it down until I got a good solid "G" note from the 
pipe (no finger holes yet).
    Then I drilled all the finger holes as per the measurements _except_ 
that I measured from the center of the mouth piece hole (subtracting 5/16's 
from each measurement as I was not measuring from the end of the cap) _AND_ 
I made all the holes too small. This gave me a pipe with the correct all 
fingers down note, but every other note was too low. Then one by one I 
uncovered a hole, tested with my electronic tuner, enlarged, tested, 
enlarged, tested, etc until I got it spot on. Then on to the next one. It is 
not a difficult process, but a bit fiddly. I did not glue my end cap on. It 
fits tight enough as is, and allows me to play about with different shapes 
and alignments of mouth holes. I also found that if I cut away a good sized 
notch under the mouth hole in the end cap, it effectively made the hole 
"thinner" and seemed to play easier. And while I carefully measured the 
distance of each finger hole, the offset I just guessed at. That seemed to 
not be too critical.
   Do wear a dust mask as you don't want plastic dust in your lungs that 
will take 50,000 years for your body to break it down. Do use only white pvc 
water pipe as it is sure to be safe to put your mouth on. The pipe thickness 
he specs is known as "schedule 40". And remember, you are only paying $1.40 
or so for 10 foot of pipe, so if you ruin the first 15", don't sweat it, 
just toss it and start over.
Have fun

David


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