Reviol cast bore flute

[catgut]

I see there is a new Reviol polymer/wood flute listed on the Irish Flute store site. Has anyone tried this flute? It looks like a very nice flute for it's modest price.

[Feadoggie]

https://www.irishflutestore.com/newsite ... =55&c2=141

I saw those. This concept has been discussed elsewhere before but I was not aware that someone was actually producing such a flute. I am anxious to see how these hold up over time. I have no specific idea how Maurice is making them. I'd love to hear the process described. A flute body lined with polymer (cast or not) could be subject to the same ravages that metal lined barrels and heads show over time. I wonder what steps may be taken to avoid that. Curious minds....

Feadoggie

[flutemaker]

Hello,
one of my customers pointed me in the direction of this topic on the Chiff and Fipple Forum and I thought I write a few lines about my Cast Bore Flutes...

The Process is not new and I won't claim that I am the first instrument maker who is using this technique.
In my days working for W.Schreiber, making Bassoons I came across this process of casting the bore into a timber body first.
When I started working there, the process was well established and it seems that they did this already for a good few years. I tried to contact them to get more information about that...

The Bassoons made with this technique show no problems at all regarding shrinkage and cracking. One of the advantages of this technique is that timber can be used that is more forgiving and can cope a bit better with shrinkage and the likes. However, even when used with African Blackwood I haven't seen any cracks appearing because of the lining. Buffet-Crampon Oboes are done the same way and the bodies are done that way to keep the dimensions stable, a far more crucial subject with Oboes than with flutes, the diameter is a lot smaller and shrinkage would have a higher percentage of the bore diameter.

I started to make plans for this style flute, after a friend of mine showed me her Polymer flute with keywork. The keywork wasn't the greatest and the sheer weight of the flute was taking all the fun out of playing...I thought there must be a way to get around this and I the first thing that popped into my mind was the techique that I know too well from my Bassoon making days...

To sum up:
The advantages are:
A polymer flute that is light, looks like a wooden flute (because it is a wooden flute...), can be made easily, can be made from less expensive and locally available timber, can use very good looking timbers that aren't usually used for flutes because it's too porous, too light, to coarse...etc...,
can be treated like a polymer flute with no need for the oiling or other maintenance that is necessary for a real wooden flute without cast bore...

I hope that answered a few of the questions that might arise...
If you have more questions, I am glad to answer them, time permitting...

All the best,
Maurice Reviol
www.reviol.co.nz

[hans]

Welcome to the forum, Maurice!
And thanks for the great info!

There is more info on Maurice's website, and some good photos showing the cast bore:
http://www.reviol.co.nz/HTML/CastBoreFlutes.html

The price looks good too: ca $350, £231 or €262 converted for the model without tuning slide.
And you may choose from different timbers.

Maurice, perhaps you can add some pics of the various timbers you use to that page, so people can see the gorgeous possibilities!

Cheers,
~Hans

[Terry McGee]

Hi Maurice

I also wondered about the risk of cracking as we see with metal lined sections of 19th century flutes. But is it possible that the lining is flexible enough not to restrain the wood during dry spells? Would it be possible to run a test? If you have or could easily make a poly-lined section, then dry it in the oven at minimum setting until the OD was a few percent smaller, and see if the ID also reduced a proportional amount? I'm sure the ID of metal lined sections doesn't!

Terry

[celticmodes]

Maurice is working on a blackwood for me right now. Since the only flute I have is a delrin Forbes, I was mentally preparing myself for the loss of my pick-up flute (see the flute, pick it up, play it, put it down, walk away). I knew that now I'd have to get the new one out of the humidor, put it together, play it, swab it, put it away, oil it regularly, etc. Being lazy, I wasn't looking forward to the new chore

I thought, wouldn't it be great to have a practice flute that had the same bore/embouchure/finger holes as my really nice flute? One I could take to sessions and not worry about it getting banged about or just pick up to work out a melody while playing harp.

Enter the cast bore...

To quote South Park "Hold on naw, I'll see if I got three-fitty." The maple one at the Irish Flute Store is marked SOLD for a reason :-p

[Cathy Wilde]

Oooh, how cool is that? So then keyed ones with blocks and such might someday be an option? That would be wonderful. Me, I love my keyed wooden flute, but I don't love some of the worries/injuries that playing in a band at outdoor festivals and the like create. I also love the constancy of Delrin; my Forbes is pretty much the same flute every day, which can be nice.

And Maurice's flutes rock. What a happy "marriage!" Thanks for the info!!!!

[Maihcol]

Nice idea. There are lots of woods which could work for this but which leave too poor a finish on the bore when reamed as normal, purely wooden flutes. I seem to remember that that is similar to how Monty Levenson's cast bore Shakuhachis are done...though I don't know if he actually reams out the cast part...The wood chosen would still have to give a fine enough edge on the embouchure hole.

I suppose, if the wooden bore is cylindrical before the polymer is cast into it, the polymer at the upper part of the bore could be thin and possibly a little flexible and so helping to avoid cracking but at the lower section of the bore it would be thicker and less able to flex (since the final bore has to be conical)...

Is the polymer actually delrin, as the Irish flute store says? If there aren't any major problems with fumes from the resin I'lll be looking to give this a go myself at some point!

Garry.

[LorenzoFlute]

So it's all about aesthetics? Everything else is like a normal plastic flute?
Also, my understanding is that cracking is mostly caused by the metal lining, what's the point in also making the body lined with plastic?
One good thing would be that a normal wooden flute could have a partially plastic lined headjoint (with tuning slide), and have the sound of wood but less prone to cracking...

[jim stone]

Obviously the question is what this sounds like,
how good is the volume, and so on. Does it sound like
a delrin flute? Or what?

Does it have the oomph for sessions?

If I may, I hope people won't underestimate how tough and maintenance-minmal
wooden flutes can be. And won't one have to humidify this new sort of flute anyhow?

Sometimes in combining two materials in the hope of getting the virtues of both
one instead gets their deficiencies. Not that this is happening here,
but I suggest we play these before getting too gaga.

[Feadoggie]

If there aren't any major problems with fumes from the resin I'lll be looking to give this a go myself at some point!

It's always best to work with resins in a well ventilated environment. Even after the initial mixing and casting there is some off-gasing during the curing process.

Obviously the question is what this sounds like,
how good is the volume, and so on. Does it sound like
a delrin flute? Or what?

I'm going out on a limb here but my guess is that they sound like a Reviol flute. Maurice does do terrific work.

I suggest we play these before getting too gaga.

Maurice, this is a really unusual development. How about a tour flute?

Feadoggie

[I.D.10-t]

One of the complaints that one hears about Delrin flutes is that they feel slippery or greasy. Guess this takes care of that problem.

[flutemaker]

Hello,
I didn't expect that much response in such short time...wow...

As mentioned before, the process is not new and there are Oboes and Bassoons around for more than 20 years which show no signs of cracks. If there was an issue with that, it would have showed up in Repair technician circles pretty quickly.

There are two versions possible, one, that has the tonehole and blowhole chimneys cast as well and the entire 'accoustic tube' is basically resin lined, that's good for timbers like Maple who wouldn't hold a blowhole edge as good as denser timbers and second, the version where the noteholes and blowhole aren't lined and are drilled after the casting process, that's a good method for timbers that can retain a good edge on the blowhole.

The difficulty of both methods lies not so much in the basic idea, but how it's done exactly...and the few problems that arise during the process...that took a while to work out...
To clarify things: the flute is not reamered after casting...

All the best,
Maurice

[Maihcol]

If there aren't any major problems with fumes from the resin I'lll be looking to give this a go myself at some point!

It's always best to work with resins in a well ventilated environment. Even after the initial mixing and casting there is some off-gasing during the curing process.
Feadoggie

Here's a relevant bit from Monty Levenson's shakuhachi site with a nice cross sectional photo of his cast bore and some general info...epoxy resins...the layer looks thin enough to flex.

http://www.shakuhachi.com/Q-PrecisionCastBore.html

Garry

[flutemaker]

There you go!...

I wasn't aware that somebody makes Shakuhachi with Cast bore...
It just proves that most 'new' things in Woodwind instrument making are very often already done somewhere else and I could easily imagine that Monty Levenson had the idea himself, not knowing about anybody else doing the same thing on Bassoons and Oboes...

One thing I learned from visits to the Frankfurt Music Fair...Over the years new things turn up, hailed as new invention, then they disappear again just to come up again later as new development...A lot of things were already done in the 19th century...probably not the Epoxy Resin bore, these resins came up I think it was in the thirties, one of the developments to get airplanes lighter, or something like that...

Maurice
www.reviol.co.nz