Christophe Mineau

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Breton flute

Breton flute

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Breton flute

Breton flute.

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Here is a whistle, or rather a diatonic recorder of a style deliberately more Breton than Irish.
It is intended for the repertoire of the bombard and differs from the Irish flute by the presence of a subtonic hole, just like the key of the bombard.
The flute is also quite powerful and stable in the low register, which also corresponds well to the range of the bombard.
It is in D major, unlike the Bb bombard, but in truth a Bb flute would be too long
and the goal for a training instrument is rather to have a similar finger spacing to that of the bombard.

The bore is tapered inverted, and the head is removable, allowing adjustment of the tuning.
The flute is made of three woods, rosewood, boxwood and Macassar ebony for the body.
It is also decorated with pewter inlaying.

Here is a small video presentation ..

For those who are curious about how to make a flute, here are some pictures showing
the steps of manufacturing.
The first difficulty, especially for conical instruments, is drilling and boring.
The piercing is done in a stepped way, starting with the smallest diameter from one side to the next, then by successively bigger diameters on a shorter length, so as to rough out the cone.
Unfortunately, I did not take pictures of this step. It is actually done in advance, so as to leave
the time for the wood to stabilize and fully equilibrate with the moisture of the surrounding air.
The first photos show the boring of this flute, ie the shaping of the inner cone with a tool
called a reamer which has the exact shape of the bore and which allows to obtain a perfect surface state.
The making of a conical reamer is in itself quite an adventure, and this is explained in another article.

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Older readers comments


Hello from simon
By simon    On 2021-06-29T23:38:00+01:00
Je suis impressionné par cette très belle réalisation. Pour ma part je me contente de chalumeaux en canne ,et je trouve déjà ça assez difficile. par ailleurs je connais deux facteurs de flûtes à bec baroques près de chez moi ,et c'est vraiment le même boulot (parfois compliqué par les copies de perces très particulières de certains instruments anciens). Je me demande pourquoi vous ne devenez pas professionnel (il est vrai qu' on ne fait apparemment pas fortune dans ces métiers...) . Bref,félicitations pour faire vivre et évoluer la facture d' instruments traditionnels .

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