Still refining my design and process. Though just minor tweaks now. Pretty happy with it.
Making 7 more flutes.
First 3 flutes mostly completed. Need to tune them and seal them (lacquer or poly or tung oil. not sure yet).
Last 4 blanks glued up today ready for the lathe tomorrow.
And finally some new totems (gryphons) carved in cherry.
Beautiful, where can I buy it?
I am glad to see you haven’t changed your tune on making more! 
Beautiful as always.
Hopefully not full of hot air but I think they are pretty. Can’t wait for the oiling. The wood really comes alive. 2 more left for the lathe.
@sullua Thank you. I make these for my own enjoyment. Family, friends, and neighbors all have one of my flutes.
First flute tuned and sealed with poly.
I had to cut off about 1/2 in to tune the flute to F. The tuning to a specific note is done by adjusting the length of the flute as well as the size of holes. Each flute’s tuning is unique due to wood species, wall thickness and differences in wood density.
But it is magic when the oil hits the wood. The mouth piece is Brazilian tiger wood, the center is mahogany and the body is Eastern red cedar. 3 coats of satin poly.
The paracord is a nod to my military background. The figure on the cedar is amazing.
And the rest are complete. From bottom to top tuned to G, F#, 2Fs, 2Es. Just need to add the totems and then have to figure out my next project.
Hi. It’s nice to see another flute maker at work. I make Native American style flutes, too.
I’m best known for the flutes I make using Bay of Fundy Driftwood, but I also make branch flutes and lathe-turned flutes.
Nice.
I am still learning and evolving my design but it has been a ton of fun so far.
P.S. I need to cnc carve some more totems from my library. I am down to only a handful.
How do you make yours?
Hi Oscar
I’m so excited at being able to communicate with another flute makes that my message is getting quite long. But there are so many areas to explore.
As I’m sure you have also found out, there are many different ways to make a NAF, and they all seem to work. I’m following the plan of making the TSH width be 60% of the bore diameter. And the flue is the same width, but fairly short, like 10mm. But of course there is a transition slope from the flue before the windway hole so that total length from the beginning of the sound hole to the windway hole is about 20mm. The amount of solid wood between the beginning of the bore to the SAC is typically 7/8” so when I drill through into the SAC I will come out in that upper part of that curved end. I also switch between metric and inches depending on the measurement.
For my earlier flutes I milled a flat area on the top of the flute for the block/totem. That is a fairly traditional way of doing it but the disadvantage is you have to carefully align the block by eye and there is nothing to keep it in alignment. I see you have adopted the method of leaving the area around the flue not reduced in size on the lathe to leave enough material to make a “nest” to help locate the block/totem to keep it aligned. I have tried that method as well and it worked well but I was unhappy with the extra volume of wood at that part of the flute. I have instead made an insert to provide enough width to be able to make the sides of the nest to keep the block aligned on the straight and narrow. This inset piece I have been making using a milling table on my drill press and this works very well but I recognize it looks like a piece well suited to CNC. I got a 3018 Pro with this in mind but have not as yet dived into CNC. Instead I was more experienced with lasers so I decided to put a laser head on the 3018. Mind you, I’m still very much a novice with the laser. I just got a new one, a Creality Laser Falcon 10W and I’m still getting used to it. But it looks to me that CNC would be a useful addition to my flute making. So far all my totems are either hand carved or cut out with a band saw and shaped afterwards. I sometimes use the laser to burn the side profile of the block on the wood and use that outline when I go to the bandsaw. Then I do rough carving with a knife and finer shaping with a rotary tool. It all depends on the design. In any case, all of my blocks have the same baseline features, the 15º forward slope at the sound hole and 12-14mm height for that area that leans on the K2 air pressure zone. The rest of the block can be any shape but I have a couple of shapes I commonly use when my totem is not a bird head or something similar. When it is something like a dragonfly or a whale I still use the fundamental starting shape and attach the totem with magnets so the totem can be easily removed when it is necessary to pack up the flute for travelling (when the totem has fragile features). And the flute still plays without the totem if necessary.
Here is a picture from my Dragonfly flute that I selected because it shows some of the things I have been writing about. The nest insert, the 15Âş front working area of the block, the magnet attachment of a more fragile totem, and in this case I used the laser to etch the design on the wings.
I realize I really should me making more use of the CNC and perhaps you can offer me some tips on this. The place where I don’t think the CNC can help me with is one of the more tricky pieces of milling I have to do with the nest insert. And that is the wind way from the SAC to the flue. My windway is made at 30º angle (from the centreline of the flute) and this back angle milling is something I cannot imagine I could do with a CNC. I can imagine it with a 4-axis CNC. At the moment I do this on the drill press using my milling table mounted on a frame that holds it at 30º from the drilling angle. I’m not drilling a hole so much as making a slot, the width of the flue, which is the same as the width of the TSH, which on a D flute with a 1.125” bore, is about 17mm. The milling bit I use is 1/8” in diameter so on this flute the windway is 1/8” deep and 17mm wide. And I’m doing this because I’m trying to get the airflow preconditioned to the 17mm width before it enters the flue to try to minimize turbulence.
Here’s another area of difficulty. Tidying up the windway hole drilled through into the SAC. I want that transition to be as aerodynamic as possible to avoid turbulence. On my branch flutes and my driftwood flutes my wood is already round and I’m not using the lathe. So I put on the nest insert when the flute is still in 2 pieces before gluing together. That allows me easy access to smooth out the transition from the SAC to the windway to eliminate turbulence. On a lathe-turned flute I can only make the windway when the flute is glued together so the only way I can tidy up the transition from the SAC to the windway is to use a small ball end bit on my rotary tool to smooth out the sharp edges the best I can. You can see that on my branch and driftwood flutes I have much more freedom to focus attention on that transition area.
You are bound to notice in the photo that I am not using a traditional leather thong to attach the block but I use 4mm elastic cord and a cord lock. This is so practical and convenient. Unlike leather, the elastic provides continuous pressure. The lack of the need to untie a knot makes it much easier to loosen the tie after playing to allow the inside of the flute to dry out.
It’s true that I deviate from convention in a number of areas.
I forgot to mention. I only make one-of-a-kind flutes so I never repeat a totem. Which means I have to start from scratch each time if I want laser or CNC assistance. I often use photographs to help me draw a now totem design and then convert that to a vector image.
However, my nest insert could benefit from CNC. I would need several different CNC files to accommodate the different sizes (keys) of flutes.
Something else that is important to me is to be able to play the minor 10th in the upper register. To that end I have started making tapered bores in my flutes. It is time consuming extra steps but I find it worthwhile.
Gorgeous work. Love the detail you are putting into your flutes.
My flutes are also not traditional though I did start with a traditional design from Charlie Mato-Toyela flute design book I purchased a few years back.
I have not done any low tone flutes yet. The deepest I have done so far is a G but would love to make a C as well.
I just use the cnc for my totems. Gives me a chance to play with my 3d modeling I do need to make a dragonfly. Did I already use the word gorgeous to describe your work. lol
Hi Oscar
I too have been a student of Charlie. He is quite a character, isn’t he. We emailed back and forth a few times when I had specific questions. And because of Charlie’s perspective on 6-hole flutes I made only 5-hole flutes at first. Until one day a customer said (imagine a whiny voice saying this) “Oh, well, I would really like to buy one of your flutes but I only know how to play 6-hole flutes so I can’t buy one”. After that I decided to make some 6-hole flutes. I knew a 5-hole player could play a 6-hole flute perfectly well just by keeping the extra hole covered.
I would really like to know more about using CNC for totems. I imagine you must make an inverse copy of the CNC file of one side to make the other side. I don’t imagine there is any way to CNC carve all 360º around a bird head for instance? That would require rotating the totem. A 4-axis CNC. Or maybe a rotary roller? I already have one of those. It must be possible, but maybe my life is complicated enough already. There’s another issue, though. And that is that people really value actual hand work.
I have tended to mostly make totems with smooth shapes so it would be easier to sand into shape. However, if I was better at chip carving I might have gone in that direction. I tend to think of my totems as 2-sided rather than 3-D because they have a somewhat flattened shape defined by the width of the nest. Typically on a D flute that would be 21mm (0.82”). I have found the Crow or Raven are popular and this gives me a problem since I want to only make one-of-a-kind. However, for the Crow totem I made 3 variations. Simply by changing the shape of the beak and the neck it becomes a Raven. And 2 different beak profiles makes 2 different Crows. What I will do if someone else requests a Crow Totem, I’m not sure.
I will attach a couple of jpeg drawings I use as side profile templates for my totems. I just scale them to the size I need and cut them out on a bandsaw.
Incidentally, I coloured the Crow and Raven totems solid black using black leather dye. It sinks into the wood and not just on the surface. I usually give them a top coat of matte varathane.
Just in case you are curious to know more or less where I’m at, I’m about 3 1/4 hours drive east of Maine.
Another incidentally, I have a Facebook page and whenever I post photos there I always add the copyright and Fundy Flutes to keep those scoundrals in line and it is from that file where I picked these photos. I post pictures and description of a new flute on my page about once a month.
Very cool.
I only make 5 hole flutes thanks to Charlie’s philosophy and since they are, so far, only for myself, friends and family, its not an issue.
Doing 2 sided cnc carves would probably get you 90% of the way for your totems. It’s not too complicated to do if you want to try.
I’ve only done 2.5d carves for my totems so far. These are some of the totems in my library.
I need to model some new totems to keep them fresh.
I have been really torn about using AI generated 3d models. They are most times better than I can do manually but they are not my art. So for now not going to use them.
For example, this is AI generated.
Hello Oscar
Yes, I understand what you mean about using your own artwork. I, too, prefer to use my own art even when some perfectly good clip art is available. I would prefer to be able to say it is all my own work.
I’m looking for your opinion concerning the feasibility of doing this job with CNC. I have attached a jpeg of a drawing I just made which I hope conveys all the relevant info.
From what little I know about CNC it looks to me that I would need to change the bit at least once. I think the first cut (surface A) would be done with a 4mm end mill. It has produced a very smoothly finished surface that did not even require sanding. I am generally using a fairly hard wood for this insert. The last couple of flutes I used ebony. But I only have a very small piece left to work with. I can probably make 5 or 6 more inserts. Then back to maple or Eastern Red Cedar, or Red Heart. I like a very fine grained wood for this part. It would be nice if I could get the sound hole cut through with fairly square corners, which would mean a small diameter bit. I will file the corners square the rest of the way. I’m not sure how I could create a smooth down slope for surface C. A square ended miller would lave a series of steps, I will later round off the corner where the 30º slope meets the horizontal flue. The flat portion of the flue will be about 1cm long, then a small radius into the beginning of the TSH. When I use an insert like this I mill down into the top of the flute until there is only about 1mm of wood left before I would break into the bore. After routing the two bore halves I square the bottom of the bore rather than leaving it hemispherical. I line up the insert exactly so the beginning of the TSH line up with the beginning of the bore. I can tell where this is because while the flute is still in 2 halves I drill a small hole through the top of the flute right at the edge of the beginning of the bore. That’s where I will line up the TSH of my insert. After the insert is glued in place I will have to mill through the TSH hole in the insert to open up the bore to connect with the insert. Then file it to shape. That 60º back angle at the cutting edge of the TSH is another thing the CNC can’t do.
What do you think of the idea of using a rotary roller (chuck type) on the y-axis to be able to do 360Âş CNC shaping of a totem? It seems to me it must be possible but I imagine 360Âş CNC instructions would be complicated to figure out.
For a slope, like that on an 2.5D CNC, you can use a ball nose mill.
For features on both sides, you can index and flip to mill from both sides.
Kiri:Moto is open source, free CAM software that can support both flip operations and rotary work. But you don’t want to use a roller like is used for lasers; that won’t hold your index. You want a direct rotary chuck that holds the work solidly.
Unfortunately I don’t have the rotary attachment on either of my cnc’s but making a 360 carving should be fairly straight forward. Just need to make the right 3d model.
But I am also curious about the totem base. I’ll run a test tomorrow and see how well the totem base carves.
I primarily do 2.5d carvings so its what I am familiar and comfortable with. I’ll carve it with 1/16 ball nose bit and see how well that comes out. Wood selection is going to be key for a successful cnc carved base.
Made a quick and ugly 3d model of the base. Should be good enough for a proof of concept carve.
cnc model
Caveat. All my software is set up in US customary system (American standard) so the model has some approximations but its close.
So short answer to if you can cnc the base the answer is yes.
Actually looks pretty good. I would slice it out on the table saw and then a quick stop at a sanding station.
Carve took about 10 minutes using only the 1/16 ball nose carving bit. The setup took longer but if you do this you can batch them out to make it worth while.
