Friday, June 20, 2014

Building the White Gold Flute - Part 3

This week, we spent time with Custom flute body maker, Alex Shtyrkov, once again.  He was preparing to silver braze the tone holes,  Now, we realize that this type of tone hole is referred to as a "soldered tone hole," but Powell actually silver brazes its tone holes.  What is the difference?  Well, brazing requires a much higher temperature than soldering, and the flute is put through an oven for the brazing process.  We have a previous post on brazing and soldering at http://www.flutebuilder.com/2012/06/why-solder-matters.html.  In the video below, you will see Alex prepare the tone holes with a brazing paste and then put the flute through the brazing oven.


After the flute comes out of the oven, Alex removes the small fixtures that held the tone hole rings on to the body for the brazing process.  At this point, the actual holes need to be made in the body, which is referred to as "milling tone holes."  It is basically a process of cutting through the metal with a rotary device to make the hole.  After the holes are milled, Alex "faces" the tops of the tone hole rings so that they will be the proper height and shape.  You will see the milling and facing in the video below:


Check back next week as we the body making process continues...

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