Silverback
- DanielT
- Un petit village gaulois d'Armorique…
- Location: Bucharest/Romania
- Main keyboard: Various custom 60%'s/HHKB
- Main mouse: MS Optical Mouse 200
- Favorite switch: Topre/Linear MX
- DT Pro Member: -
Look for a good brand, I have no clue what you can find in your hardware stores Here for example Stanley is pretty decent
- Broadmonkey
- Fancy Rank
- Location: Denmark
- Main keyboard: Whitefox
- Main mouse: Zowie FK2
- Favorite switch: MX Black
- DT Pro Member: -
- Contact:
I used a very old jewelry file. It wasn't broad enough to fit the hole, so it made it harder to achieve a good result. But I also underestimated how much trouble a bad job would give me and rushed it. Should have been more patient!
- Mal-2
- Location: Los Angeles, CA
- Main keyboard: Cherry G86-61400
- Main mouse: Generic 6-button "gaming mouse"
- Favorite switch: Probably buckling spring, but love them Blues too
- DT Pro Member: -
- Contact:
When making handmade flutes, I use a combination technique on the headjoint, which is by far the most critical hole. For one thing, it's not round, it's more of a rectangle with rounded corners. For another, it's not cut straight, but at about a seven degree angle. I drill it straight, enlarge it with the stone grinder bits on a rotary tool, and hand-finish with flat and round files. For tone holes, I just drill them undersized and use the stone grinder bit to tune them individually. Unfortunately, the inner diameter of PVC plumbing pipe is inconsistent, so I have to compensate for the variations via the size of holes, which means no two come out with exactly the same holes.Broadmonkey wrote: ↑I wouldn't recomend you use a Dremel. With that you can't maintain a square hole and it's harder to make it precise. I would just bite it and use a file.
Of course, musical instruments are not often made of aluminum or stainless steel, but mouthpieces sometimes are, such as Berg Larsen. They are notoriously difficult to work on, and sometimes they need it because there are certain dimensions that must be spot on or they just won't work at all.
Be aware that rust is not an indicator of poor quality. Not being stainless is one of the prices to pay for the kind of good, hard tool steel you want in a file. Brittleness is the other thing you're going to have problems with. Do not use files as levers. They will snap.Muirium wrote: ↑Anyone got good metal file recommendations? The ones I've got are old and blunt, so I was getting nowhere when I tried. Trouble is: files all look alike in the shops…