Binding around heads, as practiced in the East? Probably because it won't help with cracking around a slide.Nanohedron wrote:Why hasn't binding caught on in the West?
When a bamboo flute is played, the wood on the wet inside (er, grass, technically) expands, while the outside doesn't. Pressure builds up and there can be a rupture. Extremely tight binding can assist the outside to resist that rupturing force.
Our problem isn't when the flute is played, indeed it's probably at its worst when the flute hasn't been played in a long time. When the flute head and barrel were made, back in dank England (heh heh, never pass up a chance!), the slides had to be installed tightly enough not to move. Sometimes you see little burrs raised in the outside of the slide to help it lock into place without needing to be too tight. Take that flute to a dryer climate, the wood will shrink, the metal will not. Tension builds up in the wood. If we get to a point where the wood can't handle the tension (and remember wood isn't good in lateral tension), it will split. Binding won't help because it's splitting due to lateral tension, not an inner pressure trying to bust out.
The same forces were what caused 19th century cabinetmakers to move to frame & panel cabinet construction. If you just make say a door out of solid timber (the mediaeval castle style), it moves a lot with the weather, and it becomes really hard to keep the lock functioning properly (the castle door used a simple latch secured when necessary with a plank across inside). So you make an outside frame with longways timbers all round. Timber doesn't move signficantly longways, so now your lock works all through the seasons. But how to fill the hole in the middle of the frame? If you just fill it with planks of wood glued in or on, they'll shrink in the dry season and cause cracks. And swell in the wet season and make the frame bulge and the lock (or the whole door!) will jam. So they invented the floating panel. It's made from glued-up planks, but "floats" in a groove around the inside of the frame. Typically a single spot of glue is used to pin it at the centre top and centre bottom of the panel, making sure that the panel is centred before letting it dry!
The flute cases I get from Ken Free feature top and bottom floating panels. Quite a few of the old 19th century English mahogany flute cases I have have splits in top and bottom because they just glued them up all round. Ironic that both flute and case suffered cracks for the same reason! Rather sad that it took me a long time to realise that!