Fomrhi Comm: 1922 Sid Jones

Towards an affordable South African recorder

My life has been spent in the engineering environment andtherefore my approach to my hobbies has beenduly influenced by my professional experience.

At the age of 64 I started to learn to play the recorder and decided I could make this SIMPLE little instrument (the first misconception ) with a minimum of effort - just a matter of back engineering the Moek Tuju tenorthat I had hired and away we go!!!!!

The acoustics were a copy of the Tuju and theprofile was a scaled up version of The "NF" recorder (Angelo Zaniol. Fomrhi Comm 485 ).

The wood chosen was South African Red Ivory,varyingin colour from black, having beenburied in river mud for years, to a rich wine red.

A steel rod laid in the bore gave me the impression that it was auniform conical taper, confirmed much later when Ihad made a bore micrometer and measured the bore.The reaming process thatfollowed was standard except that for practical purposes themid joint was made in 2 pieces and glued together just prior to a final reaming to measured size.

At this time I knew NOTHING about tuning a recorder. Had I done so I might well not have started,but the luck of the innocent / ignorantprevailed and the instrument turned out well; in fact a youngstudent borrowed it andwon the Pretoria eisteddfod with it in2008. The instrumenthas never been tuned.

Strain on the right hand thumb joint persuaded me to start playing the treble, and my recorder making efforts switched to the same instrument.

Iacquired an amateur Mentor, amature studentcalled Jim Lynham, who was studying recorder makingat the LondonMetropolitanUniversity. He accepted Dave Armitage's challenge to help this guyin South Africa who wanted to make recorders,resulting in a 5 year e-mailcorrespondence and now long conversations on Skype and a most valuable friendship.Jim came out to SA in January to be best man at my wedding, such has the friendship become.

To make a recorder the novice needs dimensions. Drawings of period instruments can easily be obtained at various pitches, but at A440 such details are not readily available. However, I heard from Jim that Tim Cranmore was coming to SA ( 2006 )and Tim agreed to give me a 5 day course on tuning using his A440 design as a model. Tooling andparts were made in preparation for hisarrival, and I must thankTim formaking available so freelyall the technical data and techniqueswhich took him a long time to acquire.

Five days does not make a recorder tuner andI would record information better in future, butit was Tim's first ever tutorial on recordertuningso we both learned something. It certainly gave me an insightinto the process and got mea couple of rungs up the ladder.

I have made all my own equipment: awindway cutter which can cut the roof inclining into or out of the bore as well as the tapering of the windwayand the under labium ramp.

I make my blocks parallel and in 2 pieces,assembling a tapered wedge to a tapered slot, the block being a push fit into the head joint. This is unconventionaland reflects my background but it works for me.

Making recorders is not the problem for me, it is the"black art of tuning" and as the only person in SA making recorders I have no one to study under.

So here I am still with so many questions: what, for instance, gives a low "A" which is in tune but has a weak indistinct sound? What causes too much breathiness in the higher registers?Why doeshigh F#play to high "G" as it does on all my recorders and on the 2 commercial recorders that I own (names withheld to protect the innocent?? ) and what are the solutions to these problems?

These are only some of the novice maker’s problems; if I had a Fred Morgan to study under as some of the present makers had, what a move forward I might make - not to become a Master maker but to be able to offer a GOOD hand made instrumentat a price SOUTH AFRICANS can afford.Any suggestions or offers of help welcome!