The Fipple and the Holes

By Bobby Neal Winters

I still have not succeeded in making a working recorder.  We will get that out of the way.

As usual, the things that I was concerned about at the beginning have not been my main barriers.  To put that differently, and perhaps more precisely, it was easier to overcome these things than I had imagined.

For example, I didn’t know how to bore a hole through the entire length of a 17-inch piece of wood with the equipment that I have.  As it turns out, I’ve found a way that works.  The first of these was the discovery that longer recorders are made in three pieces.  Each of the pieces is short enough to fit on my lathe.  I can then bore from each end to meet in the middle.

I won’t say that is easy, but I will say I am getting better at it, and it’s now just one of those things that takes time.

It has also helped that I’ve switched from using forstner bits to using augur bits.  (I see ways that I can use these in my other woodwork, so my long-suffering wife may eventually be up to her eyeballs in bud vases, but that will be another problem for another day.)

That out of the way, my focus shifted to the head of the recorder, which is also known as “the fipple.” (Let me pause here to say that as a lover of language and trivia, I take an unreasonable delight in the existence of this word in our language.)

When you look at flutes and/or whistles of this type, the end that you blow into has a particular structure.  There is a narrow duct that you blow into which runs over a block that narrows the interior tube of the flute for a short length before it allows it to expand back out. On that same end, there is a hole at the top of the flute that allows some of the air to escape. It is called “the window.”

The narrow duct is aimed at the bottom edge of the window which is sharpened to split that stream of air.  This edge is called “the labium.” 

Part of the stream of air escapes through the window, and the rest continues down the flute.

The way the narrow duct is constructed to aim the labium is key to making this work.

To do this, I had to shift from my “big work” of turning wooden tubes on a lathe to “close work” of carving on those wooden tubes.

This was a very rewarding thing.  I am a better woodworker for learning how to do this.  I am a better human being than I was before I forced myself to slow down and do this. (I will be a much better human being after I clean up the clutter I made in the process, but I digress.)

After I figured this part out, I went back to some of my earlier efforts which made no or poor sound, and I was able to fix some of them.

I now have four long whistles--two from eastern red cedar, one from maple, and one from purpleheart--which could be made into recorders.  I just need to put the holes in them so they can make more than one note.

This is my current barrier.  The amount of work that I have tied up in even one of these pre-recorders is substantial.  I’m having a hard time overcoming the emotional barrier of making holes in them.

I’ve watched videos on how to do it.  It is one of those things that is part science, part engineering, but very much art.

I am approaching that art with respect.

The barrier is in my mind.

In the past the way I’ve overcome mental barriers is through ritual.  For this sort of thing, I’ve got a ritual of putting my space in order.  If you’ve ever watched a minister or--perhaps a better example--a priest preparing communion, there is a way that the setting is ordered.

I need to put my space in order for this process.  I need to remove the clutter from the bench.  Turn off the TV that keeps me company; turn off the noisy shop heater that keeps me warm.  Get out my most complete set of drill bits and my most accurate measuring devices and start the process: One hole at a time; one note at a time.

And I must be willing to risk my creations.

Risk is an important part of the process.  Sacrifice is sometimes necessary.  The blood that I sometimes accidently stain my creations with might not be enough.  I may have to sacrifice one or two of them.

I hope that it doesn’t go that far.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.

All I can say for sure

 All I can say for sure

By Bobby Neal Winters

I’ve been writing a lot about woodworking and making recorders lately, so I thought I would take a short break and write about something else.

My Bible study is going through the Acts of the Apostles as a follow up to the Gospel of Luke.  So far, the take away from it is simple: Be Bold.

The Apostles, buoyed by the Holy Spirit, were bold.

Being bold is effective.  Being bold puts opponents, puts bullies on their heels.  Authorities, as a rule, and bullies, in particular, are used to having their way.  While they might be used to resistance, they are not used to bold resistance.

People, in general, see someone who is speaking boldly, they interpret that as confidence.  If you are confident in yourself, it is easier for them to be confident in you.

Our President--whatever you may think of him, and I do mean whatever--has internalized this.  He speaks boldly.  He will make a bold statement, and, when confronted, will become even bolder. Love him, hate him, have hope in him, be fearful of him. He has made this work for him.

That’s him.

What can those of us who don’t have his money, his background, his office, his backing do?

One thing I would suggest--and it’s something I need to be careful about myself--is not to speak unless it is something that I am sure about.  That is to say, I need to listen more than I speak.  I need to do research about whatever I am going to talk about.  I need to not say something if I don’t know that it is true.

Implicit in that is knowing the difference between knowing something and thinking it. Here I am getting into territory where I need to take my own advice and not say something I don’t know.  But to speak boldly, I will say there is a continuum between thinking something and knowing it.

Often we say that we know something, and it’s just what we think.  We heard someone who is on “our side” say it, it seems to reinforce “our side” so we repeat it.  We think it’s true, but we’ve given it very little consideration.  We just pass it on.  

We are being used by whoever said it like a piece of paper. (And, for those of you who get the reference, sometimes we are used like a page ripped from a Sears catalog.)

Knowing is more than this.

Knowing requires considering an idea; testing it.  As scripture says, “Test all things and hold on to what is true.”

How does this translate to action?

The most important action is to keep silent when we don’t know; to speak kindly but boldly when we do know.

This is why I’m writing about woodworking and making recorders so much these days and not about politics.

I don’t trust much of the day-to-day information that comes through the various national media outlets, social or traditional.  Each of the two major political parties says the other is full of liars and thieves.  

Ironically, that is just about the only thing they say that I believe.

I feel better about leadership the closer it gets to Pittsburg, Kansas. While we are not all perfect, we are simple enough folk that our flaws are apparent.  I can trust that.

Having said all this, I do have some recorders in various stages of completion. Maybe, just maybe, I will have one that works by the next time I write.

That’s all I can say for sure.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.

 A Whistle with holes in it

By Bobby Neal Winters

While I am still doing many other things with my life, I am still “going down the rabbit hole” on my project of making a recorder, i.e. a simple, whistle-like flute.

It keeps me out of people’s hair.

I don’t play the recorder. In grade school we were introduced to the “Tonette,” which in hindsight I see was a cheap soprano recorder made of red plastic.  This would’ve been in the seventies. (I see on Amazon you can still get them for less than $15. They have other colors.) Since that ancient time the closest I’ve been to woodwinds was when two of my daughters--separated by years--played the clarinet in the high school marching band. Unbeknownst to me, I was--through the generosity of my daughters--providing replacement reeds to the entire band at that time, but I digress.

That previous paragraph was simply to explain that--when I started--I didn’t know anything about a recorder. Nothing. Nada.  I thought it was just a long whistle with holes down the front. (Yes, and one in the back. I know that now.)  But there is more.  A lot more.

I’ve made quite a few whistles.  Some have turned out to be duds, but most of them work.  Some of them work almost too well: They are high pitched, loud, and very, very annoying.

I take pride in the last bit.

The truth is that you can make a whistle almost by accident.

We’ve all been in buildings on windy days and have heard the wind whistling through the attic, through the ventilation, through randomly placed pipes. You get all sorts of whistles that way.

It is harder to get a particular type of whistle, the type of whistle you want to hear coming out of a musical instrument. 

Learning how to do this is where I am spending a lot of time and effort lately. Let me take some time to expand on what I mean by this.

To begin with, (and I am sure I am over-simplifying here, but let’s just brazen through until someone tells me differently) a whistle is made when a stream of constrained air is split by a sharp edge. The Wikipedia articles on flutes say this, but my Grampa Sam knew it too at some level because he could make a whistle with a blade of grass.  There are some amazing individuals who can do it through their teeth.

I am having trouble with it.  It is hard.

It is hard, but I am stubborn.  

I’ve decided to approach the problem by breaking it into smaller pieces.  In this case, that metaphor can be taken quite literally: Recorders are made in pieces.  These pieces are the head joint, the middle joint, and the foot joint.  The head joint is where the sound is made and the other two joints help to modulate it.

I’ve decided to work on making the head joint.  

The head joint is essentially a whistle with an open bottom.  It’s got to have an open bottom because it’s going to be attached to the middle joint.  To make it, I make a tube of wood on the lathe with a stepped opening--a mortise--on the end where it’s going to connect to the middle joint.  I then take that tube and I start carving the whistle into it.

That last sentence is wherein the challenge lay. I’ve made several head joints that serve as whistles.  But then I connect them to the middle joint and get that song referred to by Simon and Garfunkel: The Sound of Silence.  

Silence eventually sounds like an old asthmatic man.

To date, I’ve made exactly one head joint that will connect to a middle joint. I’ve made a video of myself blowing through it, and my recorder expert has told me it was “roughly” a C note.  I appreciate the kindness in the word “roughly.”

I am now in the process of trying to replicate that.  If I can replicate it, I can improve upon it.  If I can improve upon it, I can remove the “roughly.”  

When I’ve gotten this part right, I can move on to the middle joint and start making holes in it so that the thing can be played instead of just blown.

So I guess that maybe a recorder is a whistle with holes in it, but where do you put those holes?  How big are they?  How do you make them?

As I find out, I’ll let you know as much as I can without being too boring.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.