Historical Renaissance recorder boring technique

Dana Emery
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Historical Renaissance recorder boring technique

Post by Dana Emery »

Revisiting this topic, recent discussion didnt cover it well enough.

Some altos and tenors in the Vienna collection ( I suspect many others too, but this collection is what I have data on), especially ones from the Bassanos (both 'HIERO S' and !!) show a contraction of a couple (2-3) mm near the top of the head joint (top of the sounding air column near the block).

Step drilling and reaming the headjoint cant do that. The amount of material removed is too much for manual scraping, and my mind balks at ascribing it all to 'shrinkage'. Yes, this includes the Ganassi altos).

If the head of the joint were at the tailstock (the foot on a mandrell at the headstock of the lathe) it should be possible to use a cranked boreing tool to scrape the concavity, this would mean working into some 40-60mm to get past the blockline. Alternativly, a long drill about the choke diameter could be passed up thru the foot and levered to scrape the concavity; both techniques might be evidenced by chattering.

Sorry, my move has left me without a functional lathe, still unpacking, fixing the house up and building shelves etc.; for the nonce I am only able to conjecture, and kust depend on you all to do the empirical stuff.
Steve Senseney
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Re: Historical Renaissance recorder boring technique

Post by Steve Senseney »

Would they have partially worked this area with a scraper?

I imagine a piece of hardened metal, about 3/8 " wide, bent at the end and sharpened with a curve close to the diameter of the inside of the windway. This would remove wood fairly easily for inital work, and then final smoothing with something like sand paper.

Another scraper idea is a circular piece metal (like a washer) attached to the end of a metal or wood handle. The edges would be sharpened enough to work as a scraper. Again, final finishing inside would be with sanding.
Dana Emery
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Re: Historical Renaissance recorder boring technique

Post by Dana Emery »

Talking renaissance, ca 1550; no sandpaper.

Windway has nothing to do with this. talking the bore, accessed thru the opnening for the plug or from below.

I suspect there is limited evidence for spot scraping, and as in modern work, that would be limited to small amounts for tuning.
Nicholas Blanton
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Re: Historical Renaissance recorder boring technique

Post by Nicholas Blanton »

Well, there would be sandpaper, and sharkskin, too, but it likely wouldn't be used for this.

I'm not quite sure I totally comprehend the shape of the bore; a "contraction of 2-3mm" sounds like the bore for the block is smaller, and the bore actually widens out at the top of the air column, right in front of the block- and then it's conical, tapering down to the foot? So, the whole air column is tapered, biggest right in front of the block, smallest at the foot?

If there's a head and foot joint, seems like, sure, you could run a scraper up into the head joint, 2-3mm is not that much. Even a half-round boring bit, about half the bore diameter, could be used to do that. But a bigger question to my mind is, why not bore the whole thing, have a bigger block as well? And does the bigger diameter also remove the "candle flame" under the fipple? Curiouser and curiouser. Maybe the guy was inspired by ocarinas.
Dana Emery
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Re: Historical Renaissance recorder boring technique

Post by Dana Emery »

I wonder if this is an artifact of development, no way to test until the windway is cut, maybe several head joints were made ahead of time and this was a fix for them...

It shows up in both ganassi altos, and in tenors by the same maker; but there are not enough instruments in this museum to do more than some speculation, I wish I had access tot he verona and other instrument data, but it hasnt been publishedf yet...
Stephen Bacon
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Re: Historical Renaissance recorder boring technique

Post by Stephen Bacon »

I believe we have good reason to believe that boring and reaming was done with the billet turning and the drill stationary. If we do our initial boring and hole drilling and wanted to make bore alterations so we wouldn't make hole alterations we would use a spoon bit as well coming in from the bell side without altering the finished block and voicing. Remember many of these were one piece instruments where the same phenomena exists. I have successfully made bore pockets in such a manner. Think vase boring. The narrow spoon bit pivots on a tool rest. Some times trying to reengineer these old methods with modern tooling is impractical. As you will notice that in old instruments the holes were more uniform in size and spacing. This required a great deal of complex bore work. Tuning as we practice it today was not observed. With a just tempered scale great flexibility (and Skill) was required. One might be required to adjust pitch as much as a 1/8 tone on any specific note to bring it in tune without vibrato or beats. Timbre of individual notes was much more a focus.
Nicholas Blanton
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Re: Historical Renaissance recorder boring technique

Post by Nicholas Blanton »

Yeah, I was thinking that I could take a spoon or half-round bit and make that happen without wanting it! Could this also be a way of tuning? If the instrument seemed to play sharp ( or, if the player liked to play with max wind pressure, and pushed it sharp) wouldn't widening the bore a little tend to make it play flat? Then the holes would be likely go out of tune but, as you say, maybe people were used to adapting. I've known serious recorder players to create individual fingerings for different instruments.
Stephen Bacon
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Re: Historical Renaissance recorder boring technique

Post by Stephen Bacon »

My experience with pocket boring in the head joint is that it directly effects specific notes depending on what node or antinode you are working with. This highly effects notes in the upper part of the 2nd octave into the third octave. In order to significantly alter the pitch thru out a good deal of material needs be removed in a greater area. For example if I wanted to get my 13th to respond without my pinky on a renaissance recorder. I could divide that sounding length ( with recognized compensation) in half and scrape there. By compensation I mean that the sounding length is a bit longer than the x xxo ooo o opening. And as renaissance recorders operate on the principal of Vox Humana the featuring strength in the first two overtones that is the octave and fifth (8th and 12th of the scale) this as well must be considered in pocket work for the correct timbre. Accurate position of the nodes and antinodes can be detected by a lump of clay or beeswax on a wire inserted into the bore and playing various notes.
Dana Emery
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Re: Historical Renaissance recorder boring technique

Post by Dana Emery »

Finally, a connection from home, with the book next to me - I can cite it properly.

Darmstaedter, Beatrix and Adrian Brown, _Die Renaissanceblockfloeten der Sammlung alter Musikinstrunte des Kunsthistorischen Museums_, Wien, 2006 ISBN 3 85497 081 1

Sadly, the museums own webpage does not list the volume (discouragin sales!!!), one has to correspond with the curators to purchase. I beleive another vol is in preparation which will cover cornetti and serpents and such, taking advantage of 3-D scanning technology. Shalms and dulcians are anticipated, but hopefully within my lifetime.
Stephen Bacon
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Re: Historical Renaissance recorder boring technique

Post by Stephen Bacon »

Dana, I will be brokering a recorder makers tools and such soon, are you on the look out for anything? Contact me off list.
I did get a copy of this book from interlibrary loan thru my wife, but have yet to do any translation of the few pages I copied, What does Brown say on this.
Dana Emery
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Re: Historical Renaissance recorder boring technique

Post by Dana Emery »

Sadly, I lost the thumb drive on which I had typed the deutch of the introductory discussions of both authors, with it the babelfish'd "english". I am now working on babelfish translation of the per-instrument comments. gonna be months before I get that in hand. Move was very distracting...

So many books on my want list, this one bubbled up to the top when I saw the detail on each instrument in the ILL copy I scrounged. Best birthday gift to me from me yet.
Yuri Terenyi
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Re: Historical Renaissance recorder boring technique

Post by Yuri Terenyi »

Just a note.
I picked up a copy from the museum shop about 2 weeks ago, when visiting Vienna. It happens to be half-price just now, so hurry if you want a bargain.
Dana Emery
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Re: Historical Renaissance recorder boring technique

Post by Dana Emery »

Did you see any other catalogs with a similar level of detail?
Yuri Terenyi
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Re: Historical Renaissance recorder boring technique

Post by Yuri Terenyi »

Do you mean in Vienna? As far as I could see there wasn't anything else on this kind of topic. Mostly the usual tourist stuff.
Otherwise I'm simply not familiar with the literature. I'm aware that there is something similar published in The Netherlands on Dutch recorders, but I've never seen it. And a couple of years ago I picked up a kind of similarish booklet from the Nuremberg Museum's music dept., but that one is nothing as detailed, and in any case, that one is not really aiming at this kind of info, it's more a bunch of comparisons between the different historical Nuremberg recorder makers across all eras.
Stephen Bacon
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Re: Historical Renaissance recorder boring technique

Post by Stephen Bacon »

Yuri, I just emailed about the catalogue and was told it was 24.90 Euros, does that sound like what you paid? Of course I would need to pay another 17.30 Euros to ship it.
Yuri Terenyi
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Re: Historical Renaissance recorder boring technique

Post by Yuri Terenyi »

That's exactly what I paid. The normal price is 59 Euros.
Stephen Bacon
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Re: Historical Renaissance recorder boring technique

Post by Stephen Bacon »

Thank you Yuri
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Andy Barnhart
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Re: Historical Renaissance recorder boring technique

Post by Andy Barnhart »

A little late to contribute, but when trying different techniques for drilling, I found that a hand held spade bit a size smaller than the bore will wallow it when moved back/forth the right distance (plus a little and minus a little). I did it on purpose to get rid of a transition line when I tried boring from both ends. I have since purchased a long gun drill bit and don't have that issue anymore. It did throw off hole calculations slightly.
-Andy
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Greg Robinson
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Re: Historical Renaissance recorder boring technique

Post by Greg Robinson »

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Stephen Bacon
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Re: Historical Renaissance recorder boring technique

Post by Stephen Bacon »

Hey, Andy, welcome,
Yeah spoon bits can wallow as well, especially under power of a high speed drill. If you think on making one piece recorders of length perhaps Dana's finding are related to this, of course at a slower speed. It still may indicate that at least the 'voicing' was drilled first from the beak side and the main bore from the bell side.
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