Rockstro

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Re: Rockstro

Post by Nanohedron »

Over the course of six pages I haven't read everything, so I may have missed it, but indulge me all the same: Are there any modern makers of these flutes who practice chambering?
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Re: Rockstro

Post by Geoffrey Ellis »

Nanohedron wrote:Over the course of six pages I haven't read everything, so I may have missed it, but indulge me all the same: Are there any modern makers of these flutes who practice chambering?

My guess would be that there are no modern makers of conical bore wooden flutes who are bothering with it, except perhaps Baroque flute makers who are doing faithful reproductions (again, I'm guessing here). Though again, Walt Sweet did mention trying it (flutemakers group post from the 21st of this month), but I don't know that he liked the result. If the goal of chambering were to tweak third octave notes, then I'd be surprised if it were needed. As paddler pointed out, these flutes were originally for orchestral players of classical music for whom an accurate third octave was essential. For ITM, I don't know how much that matters and making a well-balanced flute is possible without any further bore voodoo.

I suspect it has to be used judiciously and very specifically to get a good effect. I can easily see messing up a perfectly good flute by too much chambering.
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Re: Rockstro

Post by Nanohedron »

Thanks, Geoffrey.
Geoffrey Ellis wrote:I can easily see messing up a perfectly good flute by too much chambering.
That was my thought; you'd have to have ice in your veins and a carefree attitude about your supply of blanks, not to mention your time.
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Re: Rockstro

Post by Terry McGee »

Sedi wrote:I am following this thread with interest. One question, wouldn't it be possible from the bore profile to find out which notes would be influenced by the chambers? And shouldn't we know which notes were/are problematic in the 3rd octave? There should be enough old flutes out and about that don't have chambers and shouldn't we see problematic notes on those that would benefit from chambering? I absolutely believe that this is a thing. It doesn't take much imagination to believe that flute makers have experimented with all kinds of things to improve tuning/playability.
I had similar thoughts overnight, Sedi. Let me put it into my own words....

For somebody to bother fiddling around with "chambering", there must have been observable problems that couldn't be dealt with by overall bore changes. Those problems should bedevil non-chambered flutes, but be reduced or eliminated in chambered flutes. Surely, with a bit of thought, we can identify at least some of these problems. Then, with the help of modelling, we can see if chambering would address any of them. Without introducing new problems elsewhere, we need to keep in mind.

When I pause to think about some of the issues endemic in the 19th century wooden flute, these spring immediately to my mind:
- flat foot syndrome, where all 4 foot notes are distinctly flat compared to the body notes, with low C usually the least affected*
- sharper notes in the left hand than the right hand, particularly A & B*
- flat F#
- flat c#*
- <insert other syndromes here> (Any suggestions?)

Note I haven't looked into third octave notes as there is usually some fingering that offers relief of problems up there. And anyway, I don't go there often! But feel free to suggest any that bug you.

* I've asterisked ones that show up in the data Ellis and Rockstro collected, back in the day, as shown below:

Image

They were real then as well as now.

Now, such modelling should also tell us what to expect from tenon compression too, and perhaps help us learn to diagnose it without needing to take physical measurements. That would be nice.
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Re: Rockstro

Post by Sedi »

I am afraid I cannot offer much help. I mean with problematic notes. I played boehm flute when younger and just started to get into simple system flute (keyless) after playing tin whistle for a couple of years (actually got my first one over 30 yrs ago but was never really serious about it back then). The flutes I have made myself (started with quena-style flutes 3 yrs ago and moved on to aluminium as my material of choice) are fine for practicing (and play reasonably well in tune when playing with my wife on accordion). The C# is a bit flat in the 2nd octave (strangely enough, third octave D is just fine as is third octave E and I haven't played any higher notes in the 3rd octave so far) as is to be expected from a cylindrical flute (they do have a tuning rod in the head to even out the octaves though but none of the problems with a tapered bore would probably even apply). So I will just continue reading the interesting discussion.
But I read in the thread that the chambers where made at certain points in connection with the wave form and the nodes of a problematic note, if I understood that correctly? So it should be not too hard to find out which notes would be affected, wouldn't it? Or did I misunderstand something? Wouldn't we just have to look at the wave pattern to decide where a chamber would benefit the tuning? Or am I thinking "too easy" here?
BTW -- on a sidenote -- your homepage is a great ressource, Terry. I learned a lot. I even tried your eccentric embouchure on one flute I made, which became my favourite and I play it every day. Really had a nice effect on the tone and undercutting was barely needed with the eccentric cut.
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Re: Rockstro

Post by paddler »

Nanohedron wrote:Thanks, Geoffrey.
Geoffrey Ellis wrote:I can easily see messing up a perfectly good flute by too much chambering.
That was my thought; you'd have to have ice in your veins and a carefree attitude about your supply of blanks, not to mention your time.
The fact is that several modern makers DO utilize chambering! I have several flutes in my collection that exhibit it.

First, let me show you a bore graph of a low Bb flute from a modern maker who, in my opinion, makes the best sounding low Bb flute out there.
That is, in fact, why I bought it. This maker's low Bb flutes are played by several very famous professional players who I really enjoy listening too.
This flute has cork on its tenons and has never been thread wrapped.

Image

Now let me show you another bore profile, this time from a D flute from a modern maker whose flutes are extremely widely used among professional players in Ireland.
Neither of these is exactly like the Rudall & Rose chambering profile, but they definitely do have chambers, and they have them at the tenons where back-reaming can
be used to produce them.

Image

Finally, just to show you that not all modern or antique flutes have chambered bores, here is a graph that has bore profiles for keyless flutes by modern makers Olwell,
Grinter, and Murray, plus an antique American flute by Riley, and an antique English flute by Wylde, labelled "Wylde from Rudall & Rose". I'll leave you to guess which is
the Wylde. By now, I hope it will be obvious.

Image

I have detailed data for a lot of flutes, but I am not going to post the precise details of a modern maker's instruments. I don't think that would be ethical.
It is clear, though, that chambering is not a bandaid used to fix a deficiency. It is an integral part of designing a flute bore that has the tuning and voicing
characteristics that the maker wants. It is possible to make a wonderful sounding instrument using this technique, in combination with others. It is also
possible to make a wonderful sounding instrument without using chambering. Neither approach is preferable.

I can also tell you that taking a chambered flute and trying to redesign its bore so that it performs better than the original (or even as well as the original!)
is an extremely difficult task. Trust me, I've tried!
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Re: Rockstro

Post by Geoffrey Ellis »

Wow! I stand corrected :-) I forgot about that first one, even though you had told me about it in detail (my memory does seem to be getting a bit more "relaxed" about the details of life...)

Dammit! I'm going to chamber some flutes and see what happens!
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Re: Rockstro

Post by Tunborough »

Terry McGee wrote:Tunborough, Paddler. If we don't get overwhelmed with offers of old Rudall Rose flutes to serve as the basis for modelling, what's our next best option? Do either of you happen to have one about your person? I don't (malheureuse!), the nearest I have is Rudall Carte 7120. It dates from a bit after Rockstro, but does share a lot of the bumps and grinds as the other Rudalls in this graph...
If I'm looking at the right line on the graph, it looks to me that 7120 would serve as an plausible subject. What numbers do you have for it to hand?
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Re: Rockstro

Post by paddler »

Nanohedron wrote:Thanks, Geoffrey.
Geoffrey Ellis wrote:I can easily see messing up a perfectly good flute by too much chambering.
That was my thought; you'd have to have ice in your veins and a carefree attitude about your supply of blanks, not to mention your time.
I think the above comment suggests a possible misconception about what chambering is an how it is used.
When flutes from a maker consistently exhibit a bore profile that contains a signature pattern of chambers,
it shows that chambering was an integral part of their process for creating a bore with the desired shape.

The chambering aspect of shaping the bore would not happen after the flute was completed, as a way of
retroactively fixing tuning problems. There is no more reason to suspect this than to suspect that the other
bore perturbations you see in virtually all irregular conical bore flutes were added after the flute was completed.

The manufacturing process is much simpler than that: you drill a pilot hole through the blank, ream it with
a reamer that has the same shape as the final bore you are aiming for, minus the chambering. Then you back
ream from the other end to create the upstream part of the chamber. At that point the bore shape has been
set, and it is really no more complicated than just reaming. This is how virtually every flute maker makes the foot
section of their flutes, regardless of whether their bore has chambers.

The important point is that all of this happens way before the tenons are cut, the outside profile is shaped or
the tone holes are drilled. So, there is really no more risk creating a chambered bore than a bore of any other shape.

Designing the desired bore profile in the first place is an involved process of informed trial and error, generally
starting with some existing instrument, measuring it, making reamers that allow you to copy it, and experimenting
with various tweaks and deviations. This prototyping uses a lot of wood and time, but once you have settled
on a particular bore profile and tone hole layout that produces the tuning, voicing and overall balance of trade-offs
that you want, it is easy to accurately replicate in a production environment.

So, there is really nothing about chambering that is any more mysterious than any other form of bore shaping,
especially when the chambering is done via reaming at the ends of each section (i.e., by back reaming).
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Re: Rockstro

Post by Terry McGee »

Plenty, Tunborough, and of course I can take more as needed. But let's check with Paddler and anybody else who'd care to comment. Do we think that RC 7120 would meet our needs?
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Re: Rockstro

Post by Terry McGee »

paddler wrote:So, there is really nothing about chambering that is any more mysterious than any other form of bore shaping,
especially when the chambering is done via reaming at the ends of each section (i.e., by back reaming).
This brings us back to my concern about definitions. From the description above, Paddler is defining chambering as a relatively short positive (ie flaring) section of bore located above a joint. Yet, "back in my day", others described chambering as a swelling of the bore (without nominating a location and certainly without linking it to a joint) such that the bore below the entrance point becomes of larger diameter than the entrance point (the spelunking notion of a "chamber"). When pressed for how this was to be achieved, sanding seemed to be the solution. How sanding was achieved in the old days before electricity and sandpaper is not explained (I'm wondering how fast you can go with an abrasive rush in an "egg-beater" drill?). Needless to say the elusive Rockstro didn't define or locate it in any useful terms.

I still contend that we are following a phantom! As soon as we think we are drawing close, it slips away into the night....
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Re: Rockstro

Post by Terry McGee »

Paddler contends that the sudden expansions above the joints are an example of chambering. I reckon they are examples of bore compression, caused by the thread wrapping around the tenons at those points. How could we differentiate?

Firstly, I reckon my second series on compression gives us the clue. Look at the central (RH) joint in this graph:

Image

You'll see a number of thin "hypothetical" lines, and two bold lines representing actual measurements. The lower navy line is the flute as found. You can see dramatic compression of the lower tenon and the region immediately above it. The second bold line in green is after I steamed the joint for 20 minutes in the pressure cooker and then allowed it plenty of time to recover and reach stability. Note how it's gone pretty much dead straight. After perhaps 200 years of distortion, it's come good after just 20 minutes! (And a week or two in the Recovery Ward.)

Note also in passing that the reconstituted middle joint now aligns itself with my boldest hypothetical - "Join the ends" - a hypothetical I only dared add after seeing the result. Oh me of little faith....

Now the shapes of bores under tenons that Paddler has been looking at are nowhere as distorted as on the Potter. Possibly because these flutes are largely cocus, where the Potter is boxwood? But if we can restore such a bent and twisted bore as the old Potter, what could we do by steaming people's precious and valuable Rudall & Rose flutes? Line up, now, Ladies and Gentlemen, and get your flutes steamed while you wait. What, no takers?

(I admit I haven't tried steaming a cocus flute yet. I've done two boxwood flutes, both spectacularly successfully. Useless flutes made perfectly useable. But I do wonder if the colour of the cocus might get leached. I guess I need to take a chance and try one. Gulp. I might just wait until our modelling experiment confirms there might be benefits....)

Secondly, there's the question of ovality. I discovered, late in the second series, that bore-compressed tubes displayed considerable ovality. A reamed bore will have none, in theory, although a small amount might set in subsequently due to humidity differences between 19th century London, wherever and now. We can look for signs of surprising ovality as we proceed to investigate this issue.
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Re: Rockstro

Post by paddler »

This brings us back to my concern about definitions. From the description above, Paddler is defining chambering as a relatively short positive (ie flaring) section of bore located above a joint. Yet, "back in my day", others described chambering as a swelling of the bore (without nominating a location and certainly without linking it to a joint) such that the bore below the entrance point becomes of larger diameter than the entrance point (the spelunking notion of a "chamber"). When pressed for how this was to be achieved, sanding seemed to be the solution. How sanding was achieved in the old days before electricity and sandpaper is not explained (I'm wondering how fast you can go with an abrasive rush in an "egg-beater" drill?). Needless to say the elusive Rockstro didn't define or locate it in any useful terms.
You can easily create a chamber by reaming at a joint, as I explained before. Reamers existed long before Rockstro's time and were in common use by flute makers.
It is hardly a leap to claim that flute makers, such as R&R, used reamers.

You can also easily create a chamber at any point in the bore via sanding using a lathe. One way to do this is to hold the reamed billet in the headstock of the lathe,
insert a handheld rod, with sand paper attached, to the required distance into the bore (i.e. the desired location of the chamber), and then spin up the lathe until the
desired amount of material is removed. This is pretty simple to do, and they certainly had lathes, rods and sand paper well before Rocksto's day.

This is really not complicated Terry.

I focus my attention on the chambers that are located at the ends of the tenons because (a) they are short and localized, which would be necessary to avoid having
very wide spread and variable impact on the tuning of many notes, (b) they are very prominent features in the bore profile graphs, (c) unlike the long, shallow chambers
that sometimes appear in the middle of sections, they can not be explained by tenon compression, and (c) they could be created easily, accurately and repeatedly by
reaming. I have not made the argument that R&R used sanding mid way through the flute sections, because I don't see convincing evidence for that in the bore profiles
and because it is difficult to be consistent about the amount of material that is removed via sanding, or in fact to measure it accurately. The technique was, however,
already well understood at that time and had been used since at least the baroque period.

Oh, and I gave formal and informal definitions of what a chamber is, in the context of a flute bore, in an earlier post. You would be doing us all a favor by spending time
carefully reading the earlier posts in threads that you post to, especially those posts that contain direct answers to questions you asked in your own earlier posts.
Last edited by paddler on Tue Feb 25, 2020 4:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Rockstro

Post by jemtheflute »

You can steam cocuswood with impunity. I've done it several times with intractable head cracks. (See my photo albums on Facebook). It softens easily and responds well. You just have to buff it up afterwards.
I respect people's privilege to hold their beliefs, whatever those may be (within reason), but respect the beliefs themselves? You gotta be kidding!

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Re: Rockstro

Post by paddler »

Terry McGee wrote:Paddler contends that the sudden expansions above the joints are an example of chambering. I reckon they are examples of bore compression, caused by the thread wrapping around the tenons at those points. How could we differentiate?

Firstly, I reckon my second series on compression gives us the clue. Look at the central (RH) joint in this graph:
You keep posting this same irrelevant Potter graph. It doesn't show evidence of the kind of chambers we identified in the R&R flutes.
Its compressed tenons all produce constrictions in the bore which fall well below any of your datum lines. The tenons of the R&R flutes
have chambers under them which cause peaks in the bore profile graph that rise above any of the datum lines. This is an absolutely
critical difference.

If the tenon that contains these peaks on the R&R graphs had been compressed, then the bore under the original tenon would have been
even wider than it is now, and the chamber would have been even larger.

On the R&R bore graphs the area downstream of the chamber has a smaller bore diameter. This smaller bore diameter occurs on a
separate section of the flute, namely the socket side of the joint. This section has no tenon or thread wrap, and so can not have been
subject to tenon compression at that point (unless, perhaps you believe that this tenon compression phenomenon is infectious and
can magically leap from section to section??). Notice that on your Potter graphs the bore section downstream of each joint is actually
larger than the compressed tenon on the upstream side of the joint. This is as you would expect with tenon compression. This is NOT
the pattern that you see on the R&R graphs. It is, in fact, the exact opposite. This is why the chambers under the R&R tenons can not be
explained by tenon compression.

So your Potter graph really just reinforces the very point I have been making over and over and over again. Please take
time to read the previous posts and contemplate the list of questions I asked you, and Geoffrey re-posted. This has all been
covered already.
Last edited by paddler on Tue Feb 25, 2020 4:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
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