wood species for NAF

[gernreich]

Hello all,

I am interested in making my own spirit flutes and hope to sell some of them if they are good enough. I was wondering if the type of wood is critical to the flute. My guess is that is is not, that the mouth of the flute is critical. I've been experimenting with Maple and Hickory. To see the first NAF I made:

http://youtube.com/carnright

Thanks!

[Sebastiaan56]

Hi Gernreich,

Welcome to the forum!

IMO there is no tonal advantage to be gained by using different timbers for any kind of woodwind instrument. The difference in sound comes from the dimensions of the variables. ie wall thickness, shape of fipple, placement depth and profile of fingerholes, internal shape of the tube, etc etc. There is simply not enough energy in an acoustic wind instrument to make the tube vibrate in any way that will affect the sound quality of the instrument. I have made beautiful sounding instruments from PVC, Bamboo, Copper and Aluminium tubing and even wood! I choose materials on workability and then aesthetics.

That said, Im not a NAF maker, my gig is whistles and end blown instruments. But physics is physics is physics.

[gernreich]

Thanks for the reply! That make me feel easier about making the flutes :-D