What I did last weekend...

Have a look at this video first, and it might give you some idea.

Yes, that is a piano on fire...it was a rough gig!

Ta-dah!

So the crack work is finished, and in fact the whole head restored. and came out as I had hoped. Photos below are again taken from the same angle as the original, but the one taken directly from the side probably gives a false impression, in that the ends of the stitches are in fact not as visible as they appear in the photos. As you can see the actual crack itself is very hard to see...which is the whole point of the operation.

As you also can see, that's a pretty fancy head cap, and the ring's not to bad either. I acquired this flute some time ago, and it is unusual, not to say unique. I'm in the process of restoring it, and in that process I hope to document the flute and how it was put together, because it seems to be the work of more than one maker, or, as I suspect a collaboration between a professional flautist and more than one maker.

So whether I'll post about it as I go along, or save it all up and post it at one go, I'm not sure.

But just to give an idea of the quality of workmanship that we're dealing with, here's a snap ( as my mother would've called it) of that head cap.

Handmade?

Thought I'd post this as a result of a very animated discussion I had with a friend and fellow musician about what constituted a hand made instrument and what didn't, and it led me to think about if there is there a line to be drawn and if so where to draw it, and also because it's of particular relevance to woodwind instruments and hence the flute.
The first thing to be considered is, of course that wind instruments as opposed to string instruments have never, except in their very earliest manifestations, been hand made. Take say, the fiddle, as the classic stringed instrument, and although no musical instrument is made using only human hands, let's not be pedantic here, and accept that in the sense that the old makers used only edge tools such as knives, planes and chisels, then an instrument made in this way is classically handmade.
Woodwinds, on the other hand, have been made using machines ( the lathe being by far the most important) since they began to made from bored pieces of wood as opposed to natural tubes. Given that, and the OED definition of handmade as "made without the use of machines" then the woodwind instruments that concern me as an Irish traditional musician are not handmade.
And yet, there is wide acceptance them as being so.
The argument I had with my friend was initially sparked by his insistence that the use of computer design programs or CNC equipment was the dividing point between what could be considered handmade and what not. Giving this some thought, I came to the conclusion that this fact in itself cannot be used to make that separation. Bringing it back to basics, if a fiddle maker uses an electric drill or bandsaw in his work, does that mean to say that the fiddle is "machine made"? I would argue that only a pedant would insist on that point. Similarly, when a flute maker uses a lathe to make the basic shape of their instrument, I believe the same principal applies. A machine is used, but the preponderance of handwork involved in the overall process still means that most reasonable people still see it as being broadly in the handmade area.
Woodwind making, it must be admitted, lends itself to the use of more than just a lathe, and most makers nowadays use such standard machine tools as milling machines, table and bandsaws etc...the sort of equipment which is found in any small woodworking or engineering shop.
Since I began as a maker, this machinery has been revolutionised by the introduction of CNC (computer numerically controlled) equipment, which although it was initially much too expensive for consideration by the vast majority of individual makers, is now becoming rapidly more accessible. We're getting onto more dangerous ground here, because if any argument could be made for allowing things made on a lathe for example, to be considered handmade, it was because the tool was being guided by the manual skill of the operator. With CNC gear this is no longer the case, so where does this leave the handmade argument?
Basically in the same place, I believe. I'd argue that as long as the processes which make the difference between a good and a poor instrument (let's say built to the same basic design and dimensions) are done by hand..and I'd also argue that they have to be...then a flute can still be considered handmade.
I'm talking here about such processes as cutting the embouchure, undercutting the finger holes, fitting and springing the keys ( called stringing, strangely by flute makers), carving the blocks, fitting the tenons, padding the keys, corking the joints...the list goes on.
In fact it might surprise you to know that even given the maximum amount of machine work even if CNC assisted, the hand processes make up the vast majority of the time taken to make a flute.
On that point alone surely, instruments made by such as myself deserve to be considered handmade?

The crack goes on...

Making some progress on the cracked head that I posted about. It's at the stage that I'd call "early cosmetic". Here's a couple of pics.

Tried to get the same angle as the original image, so you can see where the crack was.

Top of Coom

I was fishing up in Galway when the news came through that our local pub, The Top of Coom had burnt to the ground. First of all, nobody was hurt, which is the most important thing, but it's hard to explain, particularly to people who don't live in a small very rural community, just what a loss this is, and more particularly the loss that it is to the traditional music community.
For as long as most people can remember, The Top of Coom, which was the highest pub in Ireland, at just over 1000ft, was a really important centre for music and even more particularly for singing.
It featured in very many TV documentaries over the years, and perhaps a lot of you know that Conal Ó Gráda's first CD was named after it. Unfortunately, this is what it looks like now...

Key cup punch and die.

The punches and dies for the new key cups have been set up in the neat little press that I got. Here's a video of it in operation. If the backs of the cups look odd when I take them out, it's due to the grease that I put on the disc to ease it's passage through the die.

Still working on the key shaft castings...they need a bit of tweaking!

The Crack....

With all the repairs I've done recently, it got me thinking about one of the most common and misunderstood faults that flutes, old and new, can have - a crack.
Cracks in wooden flutes can occur for two reasons. Firstly they can develop in the seasoning process of the timber. This is one of the reasons that timber suppliers wax the ends of the billets, because moisture leaves the wood much more easily via the end grain, and if this happens too rapidly it can lead to cracks.
If these are big enough, then the piece will be rejected in the manufacturing process, but what can happen is that a very fine crack will go undetected until the flute is finished and begins to be played. Then the stress caused by the timber absorbing water and drying out again, as happens in the normal process of playing, can cause this minor cracking to quickly become bigger. If this is the reason for a flute joint cracking, then it generally appears very soon after the flute arrives from the maker and begins to be played. It's also one of the reasons why it pays to play a flute in gradually.
Cracks which develop later on are generally due to water stress, typically caused by a combination of not playing on a regular basis, playing for long periods of time with out swabbing out the moisture, and storing the flute in conditions which are too dry. Essentially it's moving the timber from very wet to very dry conditions too quickly. Physical stress may also result from this as when a swollen tenon can crack the socket.
The metal lined parts of the flute, the head and barrel, tend to suffer more from this, as wood trying to shrink over a metal tube has "nowhere to go".
Fixing cracks is one of the commonest repairs that the flute restorer has to face, and unfortunately is also one of the most misunderstood. The two commonest methods used, filling the crack, and glueing the crack are unfortunately also the two most unsuccessful.
Putting material into a crack can on a short term basis solve the problem...particularly if air is leaking from the crack, but although a soft material such as beeswax will not cause this problem ( it causes others) a harder material, such as the commonly used epoxy, essentially only serves to push the two sides of the crack further apart. It may take some time for this to happen, but if you look carefully you will eventually see very fine cracks developing, one on either side of the filling material.
So in attempts to avoid this the idea of gluing the crack closed arises, and in fact some fillers are glues in their own right, such as the epoxy mentioned above. The problem here is that the types of timber that flutes tend to be made of do not glue at all well, and given the fact that by the time the repair is attempted the internal surfaces of the crack are usually covered in oil or grease, the chances of any sort of permanent adhesion are extremely low. It must be remembered that the forces that cause the crack in the first place are extremely strong, and even if there was good adhesion it might not be sufficient to overcome them.
Again, if an old flute is repaired by this method, it may hold for a while, especially if it's not played much, but eventually cracks will appear again between the glue and the timber.

So, what's the answer? In a word pinning. In principal this technique involves drilling small diameter holes across the crack, at 90 degress to it, and at a tangent to the bore. Small pins are then inserted and glued into place, and then the repair is cosmetically finished. I said glued into place, but in fact originally silver wire was used, sometimes threaded ( as in a screw thread). This is the only type of crack repair that one sees on 18th and and 19th flutes, due in part I'd imagine to the fact that contemporary glues were just about useless in these cases.
The technique that I use involves threading, but this time of the sewing variety. A bunch of threads, the number depends on the size of the drill used and the thread thickness, is pulled into the hole until about 20mm still protrudes. A drop of superglue is applied to the thread, and this is then rapidly pulled into the hole. The result is that the pressure causes the glue to set almost instantly, resulting in a hard pin which is glued into the hole. The ends are cut off, and the process repeated.
The reason that this is such a successful method of crack repair is that the pins act directly against the pressure caused by the crack wanting to widen, and the area of glued surface which resists this is vastly bigger than just putting glue on the sides of the crack, which of course also happens in this case.

Here's a photo of the head of a flute by William Card that I'm currently working on. I left it unfinished, so that you can see the crack itself, the holes drilled, and some of the thread pins inserted. (they've been cut off flush on the right hand side)  I'll post another photo when the work is completed.