Bore Finish

Good Afternoon Friends!

Being fairly new in the flute making bidness.... I like (of which I
assume I am like!) many beginner NAF'ers have questions. My question
revolves around the Bore and Sac bores before the halves are glued up.

Here's where my NAF building comes from : Ki I TA.. Great
instructions! Here's some of my questions:

1 - Before the 2 halves are glued up I have been finishing the bore
halves with about 3 coats of shellac (sand/shellac/sand/Shellac....).
Mainly because I think it's easier than other methods like pouring or
dunking shallac down the bores after glue up.. I would like some feed
back here.

2- I have been using a "CA" glue + accelerant to glue up.. Its much
faster and that way I can get to the fun part faster..... Whats your
thought(s).

3 - I've seen some flutes with "holes" drilled down on the south end
of the flute, generally there are Four holes, each pair opposing each
other. Is this for tuning or looks .. or what?

Thanks for helping a brother out!

May God richly bless you.

Jim

,

Hows the flute making coming along. I missed this post and have been very busy and not been here for a while. I have since for health reasons and the health of the planet gone totally to natural oil finishes, I put them bown the bore before tuning and allow a 3 day minimum before tuning to dry out the oil, bore must be sealed as importantly as the rest of the flute, sac is most important so you may want to do two applications there.

I think medium viscosity CA glue is OK but I only use it for hairline cracks or to put end caps on if I have no time, otherwise for joining blanks I recommend titebond2 and I also mostly use urethane glue for end caps only as its strong, makes a mess though as it foams up on the inside so don't use for joining blanks.

The four holes you mention are four direction holes or four winds, they are mainly to symbolise the four directions but they have an added advantage that they allow for quicker and less fidly tuning because that way you dont have to remove length bit by bit till you get to the desired fundamental note, and they stabilise the the tone of the bottom note. However the disadvantage is they add extra length to your flute so I only use them on short high flutes like high B and high C.

Look forward to seing some pics sometime, I'd love to show some pics of a Qld Maple flute with inlay that I recently made.

Blessings on the journey

Matt