Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Itamar Foguel wrote:

Now i wanted to ask for suggestions if anyone have any experiance or tips regarding the matter?
andmaybe  suggestions for constructions? or blue prints? types of wood?

Itamar,

You might want to contact Peter Ross and David Brown about turning shakuhachi. I don't have contact information for David.

I was considering doing that myself, and did some research, but don't have the money to invest in the tooling and equipment.

Lathing a piece of wood is not too difficult. The problem is getting the right bore profile.

Many wood flutemakers use specially built tapered reamers which can be expensive if you have them custom built to your own specifications, going from both ends to get the choke point in the right place, as well as the proper reverse taper at the bottom end of the bore.

You could do a straight bore which would be much easier, but you wouldn't have much difference in response and octave tuning than a PVC flute. I have played a few wooden ones, and the tone from flute to flute with almost identical profiles can be startlingly different. As far as tone closest to bamboo that I have found was a cheaper maple...older, VERY hard and resonated and projected very well. I have a David Brown 1.8 in tiger myrtle and a 2.1 in silky oak, and the tiger myrtle is much brighter than the silky oak (which isn't really true oak), but still mellower in tone then the maple. It depends on the tone you are going for I suppose.

When you build them, please share your experience with us!

As far as feeling uncomfortable with your repeated postings here, I used to post a lot when I started building my own a year ago. Ken, Perry, as well as other builders here really are into sharing their knowlege, experience and love of shakuhachi alchemy.

I look forward to your next post!

If worse comes to worse, you can always ream out cylindrical and then rebuild the bore to the correct taper and dimensions using something like epoxy or car body putty. But at that point you might as well start with a nice culm of bamboo, since the work will be the same...

Toby

You should definitely look into how recorders and Irish flutes are made. Their bores are usually made using reamers, by machine or hand. On youtube, there are a few interesting videos on recorder making using machinery. Making these flutes with non-power tools means making reamers that have handles on them. You drill a pilot hole then twist in the reamer(s). Making reamers is tricky business and I'm told can take as long to make as the flutes themselves (I've never actually done this because of wrist problems). But, because you're making shakuhachi, you could pay less attention to exactness (maybe just buying reamers that are roughly the right size) and spend most of your time time tuning in usually shakuhachi ways of subtraction and addition.

Recorder makers do sometimes make use of adding beeswax in places to tune. To get the beeswax to be permanent, you want to melt it on, so it clings to the wood. And nope, it won't melt on you, not unless you leave it in a car in the sun in summer. It's nice to use, because it's safe to handle, and you can use the same material to test a blob before you take the time to melt it in.

Something else that doesn't involve machinery, but heck...

Wood burning the bore - maybe. I have a nighbour who's in his 70s who's lived in this neighbouhood on and off for his whole life and is full of stories about how things used to be around here. He's always having a chuckle at me out on the front steps while I saw away on something, and then he tells me stuff. He says that when he was a kid, there were "old guys" then who would make flutes, probably Irish ones - Celtic music is still pretty common in this area. They would make them by using hot pokers and burning out the bores. I don't know how difficult this is but I'd love to try it one day. But apparently, it causes a lot of smoke. I've never heard of anyone else doing this with wood.

Straight-bore drilling, done with . I had a maker of native flutes drill out some wood for me. From there, I cut the rest that I needed.

Philippe Bolton's page: http://www.flute-a-bec.com/indexgb.html Excellent articles and photos.
He also has electoacoustic recorders, for the ever-curious to see.

Also  _The Amateur Wind Instrument Maker_ by Trevor Robinson.  and The Woodwind Quarterly http://www.musictrader.com/wwqindex.html are available. These might offer you ways of making reamers, but I can't remember and I'm too tired to check. There are other books on woodwind making too, of course.

Have fun,
Kim.

Last edited by Owloon (2009-11-27 14:26:21)

I've made a few wood flutes and it is very possible to turn them on a lathe. The bore is the hardest part and this is what I found worked the best.

Take a 3" x 3" x 24+" inch piece of wood and very carefully slice it in haf length wise to end up with two 3" x 1.5" x 24+" sections. Keep track of which sides were together initially or the grain wont line up as well as you would like. Then carefully notch the wood down the middle to form a groove. I have used a table saw as well as a router for this and recommend a router mounted to a table. Its easier to get a good well centered notch. Glue the two sections together and wait a week or two. Dont start the next step too early or the pieces will come apart on the lathe and that can be dangerous at worst or frustrating at least.

I use a half inch foot long drill bit to get the rough bore profile drilled and then switch to those conical shaped metal cutting bits on very long extension rods to roughly shape the bore a bit further. You will need a couple of extension rods to get the choke point correct near the bottom of the flute. After that it is just getting the exterior of the flute to look like you want. I would not recommend taking the flute off the lathe until you get it sanded to perfection. It is very tough to get it centered exactly the same and this can lead to one side being sanded better than the other.
After this you should switch to hand tools like files and sandpaper on a stick to finish the bore.

Email me if you want and I can take some series pictures tthat may make the process clearer. Hope this helped a bit.

Owloon, thanks ill try to look into it and try find out about the reamers. Eric i sent u an email but ill also say here i would love to see pictures of the process
Toby, for the time being, im flooded with homework but it might be interesting to make a (PVC?)Bore positive on a lath (although i found some graphs that explain the process it might get tricky to do it on a lath although i have precise scales on the machinery lath at the academy. any way even if ill have the positive i don't really know the whole process of doing a shakuhachi with a synthetic bore.

We should really re arrange some of the posts around this forum make them into guides on the different subjects of shaku making and "stick" them at the top with ken's guide, instead of only searching for old posts.

Last edited by Itamar Foguel (2009-12-04 20:24:50)

for the time being i play around with some boo i have and making shakuhachi out of it during some of my weekends (its the third 1 now). it plays nice but its not perfect in tuning...

I play by myself, i read what info i find on the net, i see the basic lesson on mejiro's... I cant afford and dont feel like having virtual lessons (im a poor student), i wish i could find a teacher here in israel, so far i know of 2 people that actually "know" how to play a shakuhachi but i didnt meet any of them yet

Last edited by Itamar Foguel (2009-12-04 21:17:35)

Perry Yung was the first person I heard use the word boo.

Back in the day, Boo referred to one thing only- reefer !!

tingjunkie wrote:

As I said, I'm a mere newb, so if anyone sees any issues with this approach, please don't hesitate to lay it on me. I'll keep you folks updated as the process unravels. Cheers! -Mike

Pretty good ideas. The only thing that gives me pause is using mechanical power to take material off the bore wall. You might consider two other methods for doing it by hand, which reduces the likelihood of taking too much, especially with the cedar:

     If you have the facilities available to you, get some 5/16 or 3/8 mild steel rod and a coarse rat-tail rasp or file, cut 3 inches off the pointy end of the rasp and weld it to the rod.

     There is a product you can buy in most good hobby shops called Dragon Skin. It's a thin, hardened sheet of metal pierced with hundreds of punched holes, which create a very abrasive surface on one side of the sheet. You can wrap this around the end of a wood dowel and keep it in place with small tacks (drill pilot holes for the tacks). Comes in different 'grits'; easy to trim to size with snips.

       http://www.amazon.com/Harmony-Dragon-Skin/dp/B0002SBONM

     And there's always good old double-sided tape (3M is the best) for fastening sheets of sandpaper to the end of a dowel.

tingjunkie wrote:

edosan wrote:

There is a product you can buy in most good hobby shops called Dragon Skin. It's a thin, hardened sheet of metal pierced with hundreds of punched holes, which create a very abrasive surface on one side of the sheet. You can wrap this around the end of a wood dowel and keep it in place with small tacks (drill pilot holes for the tacks). Comes in different 'grits'; easy to trim to size with snips.

       http://www.amazon.com/Harmony-Dragon-Skin/dp/B0002SBONM

     And there's always good old double-sided tape (3M is the best) for fastening sheets of sandpaper to the end of a dowel.

Thanks for the suggestions edosan. I'm intrigued by the Dragon Skin. Have you worked with it before? Does it remove material faster/easier than sandpaper? I think you may be right about not using a power drill- it may be safer to just construct the device, then turn it by hand. More time and effort, but more control too.

Since you are going to have a fairly smooth surface to work with, the dragon skin should work well. It comes in several different coarsenesses. I think the biggest obstacle you're going to have is judging what you are doing. It takes considerable playing experience to actually tell how a shakuhachi is performing when you are making changes in its various aspects.

I'd recommend your putting in considerable woodshed time learning about how to play before getting into constructing. Your choice, of course, but the best makers have always been good players.

Last edited by edosan (2010-01-22 14:12:54)

tingjunkie wrote:

I can dream right?

Sure you can dream: while you are practicing shakuhachi and taking some lessons