Making Recorders

[Angus 69]

I was interested in the posts that were put up on Recorder making. I am not a recorder player, But was asked if I would build a recorder for a man. Thinking it would be a small recorder I said yes, A week later he turned up with an old bass recorder & said this is what I want, I don't know if I looked shocked but I felt it. He wanted one built in Huon Pine, we found a good hard piece of huon & using his old one as a sample, it was missing the mechanism that covered the bottom hole. I have been wood turning for 30 years so that didn't pose a problem. The recorder turned out to be quit a good instrument & played nice. I have since made another one but was not quite as lucky with the second one it played the low notes but not the high ones, So I spent a lot of hours getting it to play the high notes & eventually it worked well to. would I build another one I'm not sure as it is very time consuming


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[orraloon]

Welcome to the forum.
I dont know the ins and outs of woodwind but the turning looks first class.
Regards
John

[Sebastiaan56]

Wow!! How did you go about tapering the bore Angus?

[bpbuilder]

Wow, superb job. The hue of the Huon Pine looks lovely. Classy work indeed.

[Angus 69]

Wow!! How did you go about tapering the bore Angus?

Hi. I made up boring bars witch brought it close to the size I needed, Then I turned a tapered wooden rod out of Blackwood & glued abrasive paper to it. I tried using the wooden rod by holding it by hand with the piece of the recorder turning in the lathe, that wasn't good for the hands when it grabbed.I was able to move it to the bench & clamping the square section of the recorder firmly to bench , I then cut a socket drive in half & holding the socket drive in my drill l used the drill on low speed to sand out the bore of the recorder close to the right size, when I had all the three pieces turned I put them together & using the tapered rod finished the bore with fine abrasive to the exact size

( I made sure I had the tapered hole very close to the finished bore before putting each piece back in the lath to turn )