Its not plastic necessarily.....

[Jayhawk]

Jim - If you drive on highway 54 to Warrensburg (or is it 50), you can taste the city's lovely sulferous water...not harmful to humans at all but tastes nasty.

Casey - Latex is unvulcanized rubber, ebonite is vulcanized rubber with sulfer added to it...no idea if ebonite would set off a latex allergy since it's vulcanized. Has your wife ever bowled and was it a problem? Those black bowling balls are still ebonite most of the time (some are made from other polymers now, especially the colored ones).

Eric

[Jon C.]

I find that Delrin works more easily and quickly than blackwood for most operations, but you need the right tools and techniques. Pilot hole boring is usually a one step operation and it takes me around 30 seconds to gun drill a 9/16 inch diameter hole through a 9 inch long blank. I use compressed air and also a collection nozzle to suck all of the chips straight into the dust collector. Of course, some dimensions can be bought as tubing which eliminates the need to pilot drill as well as minimizing the waste material.

I agree with Dave, it is very easy to work if you know how to work it. All my cutters are carbide, Delrin will never dull them. Gundrills go right through the stuff, providing you are not overheating the tip. You never want to get this stuff to it's melting point! I get the Delrin pre-drilled, so there is less waste. It comes with a hole just under 3/4", this works great for head joints and barrels. I am not make many flute at the moment, so I mainly use Cocuswood or Boxwood, Blackwood is so messy...

[Casey Burns]

So in my email tonight I get this choice item. I suppose if I made plastic flutes, I'd be all set!

I am still trying to figure out what they mean by the word "Gland". They have been breathing too many plastic fumes perhaps....

Dear
Gland to hear that you’re on the market for chemical products.
This is Shenzhen United Great Import﹠Export Co.,Ltd in China .

We specialized in producing kinds of different chemical products such as:

Plastic bags

Polypropylene PVC ABSResin PET Flakes HIPS HDPE

High quality and competitive price for you! If you are interested in any of
them, please contact us at any time! Thanks!

Best Regards


Miss Miya
Company: Shenzhen United Great
Import﹠Export Co.,Ltd

[monkey587]

So in my email tonight I get this choice item. I suppose if I made plastic flutes, I'd be all set!

I am still trying to figure out what they mean by the word "Gland". They have been breathing too many plastic fumes perhaps....

Comic Sans means business.

[pancelticpiper]

I've only tried a few delrin/polypenco flutes and they seemed to play alright but were exceedingly heavy.

Poly is heavier/denser than blackwood, so it seems to me that to get the same potential for vibration the flute tube would have to be correspondingly thinner.

This is especially true of poly Highland pipes, which feel twice as heavy on the shoulder as an ordinary wood set. I can't imagine why the pipemakers insist on using the same thicknesses of everything on their poly pipes. Tonally the poly pipes and blackwood pipes are quite similar: I had two blackwood and one poly set all by Dunbar and the bass drones sounded indistinguishable. The poly tenor drones were a tad louder, but when I measured them I found that they had slightly bigger bores than the wood ones.

Of course with a thinned flute head you need the chimney. But what about the flute body? Do you need to maintain the same chimney height as wood flutes? Silver flutes have much reduced chimney heights on their toneholes, don't they?

Does anyone make a good-playing thin-walled poly flute?

BTW Casey I used to have a wonderful all-boxwood Gaita Gallega in C. Blackwood rings. But I sold it on Ebay a few years ago.

[Jon C.]

I've only tried a few delrin/polypenco flutes and they seemed to play alright but were exceedingly heavy.

Poly is heavier/denser than blackwood, so it seems to me that to get the same potential for vibration the flute tube would have to be correspondingly thinner.

This is especially true of poly Highland pipes, which feel twice as heavy on the shoulder as an ordinary wood set. I can't imagine why the pipemakers insist on using the same thicknesses of everything on their poly pipes. Tonally the poly pipes and blackwood pipes are quite similar: I had two blackwood and one poly set all by Dunbar and the bass drones sounded indistinguishable. The poly tenor drones were a tad louder, but when I measured them I found that they had slightly bigger bores than the wood ones.

Of course with a thinned flute head you need the chimney. But what about the flute body? Do you need to maintain the same chimney height as wood flutes? Silver flutes have much reduced chimney heights on their toneholes, don't they?

Does anyone make a good-playing thin-walled poly flute?

BTW Casey I used to have a wonderful all-boxwood Gaita Gallega in C. Blackwood rings. But I sold it on Ebay a few years ago.

I have never weighed delrin, but I am pretty certain it is not heavier then blackwood or cocuswood. I have a triple beam, if I get a chance I will weigh the different materials... The delrin flutes I have made in the past are quite light, it is how you turn the flute, if it is a chair leg, yes it will be heavier. If the body is thinned, you will have to take that in account when tuning the flute, but ihave made ultra thing bodies, and it didn't change the tone. The embouchure chimney is critical, but it is possible to offset the bore, to increase the chimney and thin the back of the head joint, Terry has been making these for years.
Here is the link back in 2005... viewtopic.php?f=2&t=24777&hilit=thin

[Terry McGee]

I haven't weighed it either, but according to tables, it's around 1.4Kg/M3, where 1.0 is the weight of water. Blackwood and cocus are around 1.2, with boxwood around 0.95. So delrin is heavier but only by about 17%.

Mass is proportional to volume, and volume of a cylinder (first approximation only, not a recommendation!) is Pi x r squared x L. Pi and L are constants, so a reduction in diameter (and therefore radius) of about 8% will restore the weight. That would be equivalent to a reduction in wall thickness from 4mm to 3.7mm.

Terry

[Tunborough]

Mass is proportional to volume, and volume of a cylinder (first approximation only, not a recommendation!) is Pi x r squared x L. Pi and L are constants, so a reduction in diameter (and therefore radius) of about 8% will restore the weight. That would be equivalent to a reduction in wall thickness from 4mm to 3.7mm.

The volume of wood/delrin in a flute would be approximately pi x r x t x L, where t is the wall thickness. You want the same L and r for acoustic reasons, so you'd have to reduce the wall thickness by 17% to get the same weight.

[dcopley]

I just put a Delrin D flute (no rings) on the scale and it weighed in at just under 9 ounces. So an all-wood flute would be one or two ounces lighter, depending on the wood. Adding tuning slide, rings, and keys could increase the weight by 7 ounces or thereabouts depending on the design. An average human arm weighs over seven pounds and you have to hold two of them up when you play the flute, so I would not be too concerned about an ounce or two more or less on the flute. I suppose you could tie a helium balloon to the end if it really bothered you.

[LorenzoFlute]

I suppose you could tie a helium balloon to the end if it really bothered you.

You just changed my life.
Or actually, you could tie it to some kind of mini elicopter device that will function as a drone as well!

[an seanduine]

I suppose you could tie a helium balloon to the end if it really bothered you.

You just changed my life.
Or actually, you could tie it to some kind of mini elicopter device that will function as a drone as well!

You might not want to take a 'hit' off that balloon full of helium just before you blow a note. It might have . . .um, err, have an 'éffect' on yer tone. Just sayin'. . .

Bob

[Jayhawk]

...but how else is one to play above the third octave D? I thought everyone else used helium, too.

[david_h]

http://www.calculatorsoup.com/calculato ... s/tube.php

But you only need this http://www.calculatorsoup.com/calculato ... nnulus.php

Unless its a conical flute of course

[Loren]

An average human arm weighs over seven pounds......

And a mild mannered flute maker knows this how, Dexter Copley?

[dcopley]

An average human arm weighs over seven pounds......

And a mild mannered flute maker knows this how, Dexter Copley?

The magic of the internet Loren ! More than you ever wanted to know at http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_does ... _arm_weigh