Dangling

Dangling on the pre- 

         cipice- 

         (Got a grip? 

                or maybe 

                a 

                life 

        ) 

        How in the world am I 

                supposed to hang on? 

Dangling on the par- 

        ticiple- 

        (Throw the Christian 

                over the 

                fence 

                some 

        ) 

        Hey, now don’t let anyone 

                take advantage 

Dangling on the par- 

        ticipant- 

        (Holding tightly 

                muscles straining 

                pain 

                slipping 

        ) 

        Hanging out with 

                the wrong people. 

Dangling on the pri- 

        nce of peace- 

        (Letting go 

                of a 

                broken 

                heart 

        ) 

        Hanging on a cross 

                For me. 

Charles P. Taylor 1/12/2003

The unMarshmallow Shooter

The unMarshmallow Shooter

I do not like marshmallow guns much because they get very sticky very fast with all that hot breath condensing in the barrel and other places... not much fun to clean out... oh bother...

However, 1/2" PVC SCH40 is almost perfect for NERF DARTS and for the 1/2" pompom puff balls you can buy at craft stores (about $2 for 100 multi-color puff balls!).

A few weeks before Christmas I got an email from a son-in law with a picture of my nephew-in-law's marshmallow shooter.  He was going to visit for Christmas but I never got the "message" that it was what they wanted me to make for him, not what he had!  I thought I would make some for the 4 boys after the Holidays calmed down.  Bad papa...  While he was here I finally understood the intent and decided to make up for my lateness by jazzing it up a bit.  Not only does it have an adjustable blow tube (with anti-suck-back protection) but it has a 12 shot magazine for puff balls with a "pneumatic" feed for about 2 balls.

I hammered some of the parts together to create 5 sub-assemblies and then you just twist mount the parts for final assembly.  They easily twist back apart for storage.  In addition to the screw that keeps anyone from sucking a puff ball back into their mouth there is also a blocking "spring" at the rear handle to keep darts and balls from going too far back and missing the air flow.

The barrel is 12", the handles, magazine and blow tubes are 6" x 4 and the small fitting tubes are 1.5" x 4.  You need 2 x 90 deg joints, 3 x Tees, 3 x end caps and 1 straight connector.  Drill a 3/16 hole about 1" from the T on the magazine tube and do not hammer the magazine into the T so that you can remove it to load.  Install a screw just at the T riser on the blow tube.  In the rear handle angle, install a u-folded 5" length of cut zip tie to form an ammo stop.

For shooter 2.0 I will make a longer upper blow tube.  The short tube makes you push your head forward to blow.  Also... I will add a sight!

Cut part Finishing with my buddy!

Sub assembly

Spread at 20' - almost too much power at that range!  I need to add a sight!

Serial ePoem

A few years ago I invented... I think... a new art form... The serial ePoem!

The what???
- It is a poem, although some would probably disagree.
- It is serial, in that the intent was to receive and read the poem in a series of posts, one new word or phrase per post, over as many days as it takes.  Below each line is a separate post.
- These are email posts, so thus the "e"Poem
See?

So, to be more specific, each word or phrase, when added to the previous piece creates a totally new poem!  If it is all viewed at once it just does not have the same affect.  A little while after writing it I tried it out by emailing it to a group of friends and family as a SeP (Serial-ePoem)... lucky them.
So, here is the example:
                                                                     Is
What... that is a poem?  Sure!  Kind of an ultimate Haiku? ya'think?  Personally, I spend a lot of time thinking about the meaning of "is".  If something is... is it?  On another blog I wrote a whole series on the meaning of existence.  It was titled "I do not exist... and neither do you."  See?  I think I will spend my whole life considering the meaning of that one word.  btw... my final conclusion was "Sorry Rene, God thinks, therefore I am.
Ok... day 2
                                                                      Is God
You have to admit that is an entirely different poem!  My mind does not even go down the same path.  If I read "Is" and then "Is God", I simply do not process it the same.  There needs to be significant separation.  I actually think one day is not enough!  The prisoner should etch it on the exercise court wall one word per week...
OK... Day 3
                                                                    Is God Good?
See how this works?  Again, a totally different poem!
So, here it is, the whole thing in one gulp.  Please try to separate each line in your brain as if it was a totally new entity received with enough time separation to experience each line as it's own post.  Discipline yourself!
Let me know how that works out for ya.

Is
Is God
Is God good
Is God good enough
Is God good enough to trust?

Being good enough to trust
   is God.


Is
Is sin
Is sin bad
Is sin bad enough
Is sin bad enough to die?

Being good enough to die
   is God.

Is
Is trust
Is trust enough
Is trust good enough
Is trust good enough to live?

Doubting God is good enough
   is sin.
Charles P. Taylor  11/29/2003

I am In My Right Mind

Dimensions for a PVC F3 flute

Hi everyone! A few months ago I told you how delighted I was after building my first bass/baratone flute in F3 (175 Hz). Several folks contacted me from my Native American Flute Wood Working Yahoo group or at my blog asking for dimensions. I must say that every flute seems to have a mind of its own, so if you want a finely tuned instrument you are going to have to start with smaller holes and tune carefully... however, these dimensions will get you close! These dimensions are from my 6th F3 flute, so the hole sizes are getting pretty consistent after tuning - Yea!

I made my F3s from 1.5" Sch 40 PVC. The kind I bought is about 1.6" true inner diameter with .15" walls. It has a tough, shiny white exterior unlike some "flat" finished PVC that easily scratches and gets dirty like flat paint. This stuff is easy to wipe off and does not scratch easily. I belive the brand is Cresline (hard to read...).

In a recent exchange with Mike Jones from my group, he mentioned that an average human can not easily play holes spaced more that 1.6" apart... so, if you glance at the finger space chart below, clearly there is something going on here! I accomplish the 3.38" reach by moving the holes around the circumference, by skipping fingers and by placing holes 3 and 6 180 degrees around to the back! I play them with my thumbs. The right thumb plays easily, but I am still fairly sloppy with the left thumb. For some reason the left thumb is just not so eager to jump off the hole, so I get a pitchy note or sloppy transition. I am hoping to add a support ring or hand strap like bassoons have to convince the thumb that it can let go!

Keep in mind that almost every flute I make is tuned to a diatonic scale... Even my shakuhachis! So, these will not work with traditional fingerings. Nor are they like recorders. They are really like Irish tin "whistles". In steps it is whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half - just like the white keys on a piano in the key of C. To play in various "modes", such as the minor pentatonic, I keep some holes covered and play some together (e.g. 2&3 together and 6 covered). (6 hole NAFs also keep certain holes covered except for cross fingering.) Of course, some other NAF/NASF builders also tune to a diatonic scale. I am sure that the flute builders group members could use flute-o-mat to redesign this for a more familiar NAF tuning schema if you want to.

There is no way I could reach the holes if I was trying to blow into the end of this thing! After all, the kids call her Big Bertha... So, I used a couple of 3/8" 90 deg elbows and some white 3/8" tubing to make a 9" blow tube. I drilled a hole in the SAC and pressed the elbow in. I use a little heat to install the elbows onto the tubing and I put a little soft tubing on the very end to avoid the sharp ridges on my lips. I can pop mine off and put on a new one if some one else wants to try playing it - fun! It is nice being able to adjust the position and tilt of the blow tube. It turned out that an end cap for 1" PVC makes a perfect end cover internal plug for the SAC! I routed a little channel and installed an o-ring to make a tight seal. I pop the top off to blow out condensation and for drying out. You can see more pics of F3 #1 a few posts back and I have not changed it much.

F3 (175), 1.6" Dia, 32.17" bore, K1=.5, k2~=3", Flue 1", 3/8"@45deg SAC vent
hole       4 winds   1       2       3       4       5       6       TSH
Pitch                G 196   A 220   Bb 233  C 262   D 294   E 330
From end   3.50      9.75    13.13   14.44   18.06   20.72   23.22   36.09
Finger Span          3.38     1.31            2.66    2.50
Hole Dia    .53       .50      .57     .48     .56     .50     .50   .22x.60
Hole placement       R.65            Rear     L.60           Rear

I took about 25 hours work to create my first "cheap" F3... my wife wants to know what I pay myself per hour... ya'know? Someone asked me how much I would charge for one and I said $1250. After the guy picked himself up off the floor I said, "well you have to remember that the PVC only cost $2, so I can keep the materials charge way down." I had to duck after that...

F3:

C4: Yellow Pine, composite tube

OK, so now I am able to crank them out at the astonishing rate of only 6 hours, so maybe $300? Some how I doubt people will pay $300 for a $2 PVC pipe... oh well... this is art, not business... They would probably walk away if I said $25! Now, I could probably build a $25 PVC flute in 30 min, but I would not guarantee that it would sound like an instrument!

Here is a little sound sample of my 3rd F3 playing a background and my new C4 (wood veneer) playing a lead over it. Very fun.

(Click to play mp3)

C4 and F3 Duet (Improv)

Charlie

New flute material - wood veneer tubing

New flute material - wood veneer tubing

I had an interesting trip to the Colorado Renissance Festival this Summer. I was walking by the elephant ride... you all know where that is... right? There was this bamboo flute stand...

Rod Baird ( Sound Creations ) has been making flutes since 1974 and coming to the festival for a while but I think not every year. I don't make it every year either, so I may have missed him and I did not remember him. We got to talking and I mentioned that I make mostly PVC flutes. We compared notes about several styles we make... side blown fifes, shakuhachis, Native American style flutes... I said I really like working in the PCV medium but it is certainly not beautiful like a lovely wooken flute...

Then Rob said... "Oh, you are going to like this..." He pulled out a lovely wooden flute, but said this is "wooden PCV pipe"! Actually, hardwood veener prefabricated tubing! Whoa! Was that beautiful! And as easy to make a flute as PCV pipe!... almost...

Well, mechanically it is as easy, but there are differences too. Like, that I can save the time to craft the tube, but I still have to finish the wood which is not needed with PVC! Sealing and protecting the wood tube is obviously a very important part of this flute material, but it is basically the same as a fully hand crafted flute in regard to sealing the sound producing mechanism. Wooden and PVC flutes will both "wet out" by condensation obstruting the "flue" and cutting edge which ruins the sound until it dries out again. With wooden flutes it is a lot more serious problem especially if the wood is not adequately sealed and the wood expands from absorbing moisture, which PVC does not do! So... I would have a new experience making my first wooden flute! I have made a few bamboo flutes, but bamboo is not as sensative to the moisture as wood!

Over a few days I searched the internet for suppliers of wood veneer tubing. It turns out that there are many uses for the stuff! One of the really nice uses is to cover metal or 2x4 columns and change them into a beautiful wooden column! It is very structurally hard and strong even with 1/8" walls which make it very light. It also uses our dwindling hardwood resources very efficiently. I connected with Ed Nash at Lenderink Technologies ( http://lenderink.com ), and as luck would have it, they were making some smaller tubes! Ed said he had some 1" (cedar), 1.25" (Southern Pine) and 2" (Walnut) tubes available right then! Cool!

It took a few weeks to save my pennies (although it was not expensive, it was not as cheap as PVC!) then I had to lay out a design. I decided to do a 1.25" C4 flute first and I had never built that key flute before. I usually figure that my first flute in a new key will be a throw away. I get the design close, but by the time I get it tuned there are usually one or more finger holes that are too big to play reaasonably. This time I was delighted to see very consistent and easily playable holes! Woo Hoo! It sounds pretty good too!

Here are some pics of the C4, 1.25" Southern Pine flute. The sound mechanism is similar to the system used by many Native American and pipe organ flutes. For you flute afficianodes, the diameter/column ratio is 19.74 which in the acceptable NASF range. There is a pre-chamber (SAC or slow air chamber), then a short "flue" that shoots a jet of air onto a cutting edge. If you look carefully at the end shot you may be able to see the wood and glue laminations. The inside and middle layers are poplar on the pine tube. Click the thumbnails to enlarge them.

The sound samples were recorded hastily with my Zoom H4 and also hastily cleaned up with Audacity. For the first sample I just recorded one track of the traditional hymn "Oh Sacred head Now Wounded". For the second sample, I laid down an adlib background track, then adlibed a lead track over that. I think it came out nice for one-takes. It reminded me of the woods just as the campfire is dieing down. So it is "Evening Forest".

(Click to play mp3)

F3_BF1_Evening Forest (original)

F3_BF1_OhSacredHead (Hymn)

I hope you enjoy it Ed and Rob! Thanks Ed for giving me the opportunity to try out this amazing new-to-me material!

Kraut Bierock made easy

Charlie's German Kraut Burritos

I suppose you might not think that cooking is a Right Brain activity, but it seems to me that it is as much as poetry writing or playing music... especially the way I do those things... too much left brain in there! Good chefs must be great artists, great managers, and great technicians at the same time! Even engineers sometimes!

Below is a modern take on an old traditional German dish called kraut bierock or "cabbage bread" or "beer rocks". While this is an old tradition in my family, I found a new link so you can see what they look like: http://cabcooks.wordpress.com/2010/02/19/kraut-bierock-bieroch/

Traditional bierocks have no cheese, no carrots, and no ketchup!
Plus, you grate the cabbage by hand, make bread dough and then laboriously
roll out rounds to wrap around dollops of the cabbage mixture... a lot of work!

We have recently started making them like a Stromboli, which is like a
pizza except that it has the cabbage mix on top! You roll it into a long
loaf, bake and slice to serve... a little easier.

Now, I have gone one step farther and lost the bread dough completely... I invented German Kraut Burritos! Just make the cabbage mixture, then spoon a dollop onto a tortilla, add optional cheese, then roll it up and take a little ketchup if you want! Enjoy!

Gabbage mixture...

Dice an onion and brown in a pan. Add 1 lb of lean hamburger, garlic, salt,and lots of black pepper - I go light on newbies! After that is all browned, add a bag of pre-grated cole slaw mix from the market. Cook the mixture until the cabbage is soft, but not mushy!
Not too hard - eh?

Charlie

The hex-flute experiment

The hex-flute experiment

There was a recent thread on the Native American Flute Woodworking Yahoo Group that I read about making square flutes. It made me remember a subject I wondered about a while ago. I searched the group files to see if this had been discussed before, and did not find anything... maybe this will be of interest to others too.

Many of you probably know that until recently most fly fishing rods were made from split tonkin cane. So, they are not one piece of cane, but are actually little strips of cane split to size and then glued together! It was quite a shock when I first found that out... I just did not notice it. All of my fly rods have been composite! : )?

My dad had a fine old cane rod that he passed on to me before his death. So I dug that out and sure enough it is strips glued together! Each strip only needs to be as long as that section of the rod, with usually 3 or 4 sections.

Anyway, I wondered about making a flute like that. Either from 1/4" wood or from bamboo. It should be a lot less likely to split, but you have a lot more potential for glue seam leeks! I figured one could make a hexagonal or octagonal cross section pretty easily. You can get router bits with the correct angles. Or, I thought about building a "trough" with the correct angle, then sticking sand paper to the inside. Rough out the shape with a common 45 degree bit, then finish forming the bevels by sanding them in the trough. Finally, glue them together et voi la - a flute blank! Many drums are made this way... as well as barrels! You could leave them as shaped on the outside or turn them down to a cylinder... no need to change the inside.

Interestingly, one strip of a hexagonal flute would be almost exactly 1/2 the diameter... the perfect size for the TSH! Insert a hex plug to form the SAC which would also hold the shape while gluing with a dowel inserted a tiny bit into the south end. Of course you would build the wind way features into the final strip. After you made a few you might be confident enough to rough out the holes before gluing too. As the group mentioned before, this method would allow you to dress the inside of the finger holes. Wrap a rubber band or length of surgical tubing around it to hold it while drying.

One reason I thought the group had discussed this was in the back of my mind I remember someone talking about making a tapered square flute this way. Of course, that is exactly what the fly rod makers are doing, but with more strips! The angles are the same the whole way, so you should just be able to cut each strip on a taper, run all sides past the router bit and glue them up! The fly rod maker has a harder problem because each strip also gets thinner as it gets smaller.

As I move deeper into bass flutes, I wonder if tapering north to south would squeeze another note or two out of my limited finger stretch... ya'know? Especially if I put holes 3 and 6 on the back of the flute... Keys? I don't need no stinkin' keys! The hole placement geometry should be interesting to figure out...

I can here you already... Interesting! Give it a try and let us know how it works out for ya...
Charlie