How to Make an F # Native American Flute with PVC -- Updated, Expanded

Hi. Before we get started, I just want to remind you to wear a good quality dust mask when working with PVC. I hope you enjoy the video. Thank you. The Native American flute has become very popular. And if you looked around, you found that the quality varies and the cost varies, too. But if you're handy with tools and all, all it takes is a piece of plastic, PVC, a little time, and you've got yourself a really nice instrument. Very cheaply and very quickly. And we're going to show you today how to make F sharp, which is the most popular key in the Native American flute, in PVC. Very simple, very quick, and easy to do at home. Okay, so for an F sharp flute, we're going to cut a piece of PVC pipe. This is just standard PVC. It's three quarter inch diameter. We're going to cut 55 centimeters length off of the end for an F sharp. So you measure 55, and with a saw, cut away. First, we're going to make the sound hole and the air hole, and put the block in to separate the air chamber from the sound chamber. So let's do that now. A simple thing, you want to make sure that all the holes line up when you drill them, so you don't have finger holes off to the side or underneath or something like that. And you want the sound and air hole to line up straight, so you'll get a good sound. So the best way to do that is to put a straight edge along the flute barrel like this, and draw a straight line from end to end. And that will be your guideline for hole placement. The next step is to mark placement using your ruler. Mark placement for the air hole and the sound hole, and then for all the finger holes, marking them as such all the way down. And when you're ready, you'll come out with something looking like this. With everything marked and ready to go. Now as you've seen, I've measured for the two holes. This is the sound hole, and this will be the air hole, air chamber, sound chamber. Now I'm going to drill these holes. Now you can do as I'm going to do, I'm going to use a Dremel tool, which is quick, fast, clean, and easy. Or you can use a hand drill or a power drill. However, if you're going to make with a different kind of material, such as wood or bamboo, a drill, a standard hand drill, or a power drill, is probably going to cause problems. The best tool for that will be a Dremel. So let's drill these holes. Don't make these holes too large to begin with. You've got two holes in there about an eighth of an inch in diameter. We're going to enlarge those and square them up to where they're about a quarter of an inch. And to do that, we're going to use needle files. And this is the tedious part of making a flip. Okay, once you've got the sound or fipple hole squared, you'll want to angle the front part, the part that's closest to the foot of the flute. You'll want to angle it just a little bit at approximately a 45 degree angle. This will split the air and create the sound as the air is blown across this. So, okay, that looks good. And give it, you know, eyeball it and make sure that it is even and not lopsided either way because that will not deliver a good clear note. All right, now, next, as you can see, the flute is all the way through. What we have to do now is put the block in. For that, we're going to use a stopper from one of my favorite beverages, wine. And let me get one out here. Just going to do a quick measure here. Oh, also, the air hole does not need to be square. Round is fine. So just make it round, approximately a quarter inch diameter. Clean that up and you'll be able to see that better. And that will be the air supply hole and this is your sound hole and it does need to be squared. Okay, so we'll measure the length that we need between to block and mark that. And then we'll saw that bit off. You could probably just use a knife and cut it, but this is the manly way. Speaking of manly and everything, there's a myth that the flute itself is a man's instrument. It's best known as a love flute. Well, in tradition and in history, it is not a man's flute. Yes, it was used in courting ritual, but it was also used much more widely as just an instrument for entertainment and an instrument for the planting and harvest seasons. And women played the flute just as much or more than men. So next time some guy tells you, oh, it's a man's flute, it's a man's instrument. No, it's not. It's for everybody. What I'm doing here is just smoothing off the sides of the cork. Then take the cork and carefully insert it into the end there. And use one of your needle files to just push it down. And you can eyeball through the sound and air holes when it gets there. And just as it gets past, there you go. Once you get the air hole and sound hole drilled, you need to determine what kind of fetish or bird that you want to have. For PVC, if you want a really sleek-looking flute that has no considerable bumps on the end and everything, you can make a slide-on fetish or bird using a PVC connector for the three-quarter inch pipe. With the connector, connectors look like this when you buy them. They're long, and they have a lip inside for two pipes to join against each other once connected. Well, you don't need a connector that's that long. So where the joint is inside, where the lip is inside, cut the connector in half. Then with a needle file, file that lip or the remainder of the lip, if there is any, completely flat with the inside of the connector. Then take that and cut a slit in the connector so it can move well and slide on easily on the end of the flute. Now, if you decide that this is the type that you want, this is a very rough-shaped flute. You need to do this. As you can see, the nest area here has been filed down and flattened, but at the back of the air hole, it is still high. That's so air does not escape backward toward you as you blow through. However, it's flat here, and the air will be directed from there, under there, to go across the sound hole, just like a standard fetish directs air through the channel. However, the channel for this is created simply by the flatness of the tube once you flatten it, and the space that flatness creates between the tube and the top of your slide-on fetish. Let's see if I can get a sound here. You can get a good sound with this type of fetish, but if you're like me, you'd prefer a wooden, more traditional fetish, but the slide-on tends to collect moisture more readily and more quickly than a wooden one. So, I'm going to show you how to do a wooden fetish that's just tied on or held on with even a rubber band. I'm going to be cutting that out of cedar wood, which is a traditional wood for the making of wooden Native American flutes. Okay, we've got the fetish cut out, the rough cut. Now I'm going to shape it a little bit. After you've got your fetish shaped the way you want it, and sanded down and everything, then you can create the channel on the bottom. You can use all kinds of wood, from hardwoods to softwoods. I prefer pine and cedar, the traditional red cedar for Native American flutes. Determine how long your channel will be by measuring from the back of the sound hole to the back of the air hole and marking on your fetish, and that will be the beginning of the channel going toward the air hole. It should be a quarter inch width, and to do that I use a quarter inch wide wood chisel. At the mark that I made for the beginning of the air channel, I make an indentation with the chisel. Now, to make sure that I chisel out the wood properly, making a channel rather than going off the edge of one side or the other, I make a mark in the middle of that indentation. From each side, I make sure that I measure one eighth of an inch on either side of that mark, and that will give me a quarter inch width. And on that mark, I draw the channel that will be carved out, and then make indentations all the way down to give the chisel a guideline and make the wood come up, and make the wood chisel up appropriately instead of veering off to the side. Now, for the depth, it should be about one sixteenth of an inch, sometimes a little deeper, sometimes a little shallower. The depth itself will be determined by the sound of your instrument. No matter how precise you are, each instrument tends to be a little different from the one prior, so you need to make adjustments to get the best sound from your instrument. Using one sixteenth inch hobby wood, which you can buy at most hobby stores, it's very thin, and it's almost the depth that a channel is supposed to be. What you do is you place your fetish on the wood and measure off what you need to cut. Then you take an exacting knife and carefully cut this out, because this wood, being so thin, it will easily, easily split and be rendered unusable. Okay, once you have that cut out, then you want to cut the channel. Again, you set your fetish on the wood and offset it to the back a little bit so you can cut a channel that's approximately one quarter inch. Now you've got that marked. Now, you want that channel to run up almost to the back of the fetish, so you'll mark it here. And again, be very careful, because this is where the wood will really split. Repeatedly make cut, but using a light pressure until you get through the wood here. And then, from that cut, you go down to these cuts. Again, make very light cut, very light cut, all the way down, and again, and again. And this way, you're not forcing the wood to split, you're actually cutting the wood, and therefore, it's not going to spread and split all the way up, let's hope. Okay, we've got that one, let's do this side. Okay, looks like we've got it. Now comes the part where you either get angry or you are successful. I think, hold on here. Okay, yes, we've got it. Lift the middle part, if you can, up from between those two side parts. And pull it on out. There we go. And then clean up a little bit if it's bad. And there, you've got your channel. Now what you do is glue it onto the bottom. Using wood glue, just a little bit of do. And that's more than a little bit. So you can take a junk piece of wood and spread it. You don't have to worry about it so much getting into the channel part of the bottom because you're going to be cleaning it up with fine grade sandpaper anyway. Now you put on the channel. Match the channel up with the back. Allow that to dry while you move on to making the flute itself. Now, the next step is to flatten this top just a little bit so our fetish, which is drying up quite nicely here, will sit flat on top and can channel the air from this hole to this hole through this channel right here. For this part, you need a sanding block, just a little piece of block of wood like that. And you can do this various methods. You can even use a large file, a metal file if you want. But this is one of the easiest ways I've found. Get a block like this, wrap some sanding paper around it, and that way you can hold it and get a nice even sanding. Now, don't go way down here and way up here. All you need to do is from about here to here, about a half inch on either side of the holes. And what you're trying to do is just flatten out the top a bit so the fetish will sit flat on the top. I'm using a fine grade sandpaper, so this takes a little longer than if you used a coarse grade. We have now got a sort of flat area on top, flat enough that our fetish will sit flat on top. Now, before I do anything else, we want to clean up the fetish. As you can see, it's not very smooth under there. We want to get it smooth and clean. And on the sides, you have bleed over of the copy wood from the fetish itself. We want to sand all of that nice and even so aesthetically it looks kind of good. And on the bottom, it works well. So let's put the flute aside for a minute because we've got that out of the way. And we'll go ahead and get this all sanded on the sides first. And everything, and then clean up the bottom. Okay, once you've got the sides and all nice and cleaned up, and you've got it sanded down and everything, turn it over. And with fine sandpaper, fine grade sandpaper, clean up the channel. You tear off a little piece and fold it up so you can work it into that channel. Now don't do it hard so that you hollow out the channel even more. What you're doing is cleaning up the excess dried glue and evening out the channel so the air flows evenly rather than over bumps and making it turbulent. Once you've got the bottom cleaned up pretty well, you can test the flute. And all you need to do is set it on there. You see how it channels the air there? Set it on, line it up, and see what you get. And if you get a note, that's good. And I've got a note here. Let's see what it is. And this is something you definitely need in making the flute. You have to tune each individual hole. Let's see what this key register is now. Okay, it's blowing very easily, too easily, and it's easy to overblow. So we're going to have to adjust the top a little bit here by sanding it a little more, and perhaps the fetish as well, the bottom, by sanding it down a little bit to lessen the air flow underneath. But so far it's showing that we have an F flute, so we want an F sharp. That means we'll have to take a little bit off the length of the sound chamber. And no, we're not going to take an inch at a time because sound changes very rapidly with very little removal. So we'll take it probably about an eighth of an inch at a time. Okay, so we've got this nice and smoothed out here, flat, and the fetish all ready to go. And we set it on, and we have a nice clear tone. And this is registering as an F right now, as you can see here, a little on the sharp side of it. But we want this clearly as an F sharp. So we're going to have to shorten the length a little bit. And I don't want to hold this like this all the time, so I've got a rubber band, and a rubber band is great for holding these on while you're in the building process. Afterward, of course, you can tie it on with leather or string, whatever you, you can leave the rubber band on if you want. Whatever you choose. But the rubber band, for building purposes, works great. So I get it on there nice and secured in. There we go. So the first order of business is to get this up to an F sharp, and then we can start drilling the finger holes. So the first thing I want to do is remove about an eighth to a quarter of an inch, probably an eighth of an inch, since this is so close to F sharp already. Okay, so now I've removed about an eighth of an inch from the end. Let's test to see where it's going. So it has come up to F sharp range. It's on the low side of F sharp, so we want to still bring it up just a little bit more. I'm going to bring it up to where it's on zero there. So I'll just need to remove probably about that much again. Okay, we've shortened it one more time. Let's check out, see if we've got it up to F sharp now. Very close, very close. Just a little bit more. But instead of sawing it off this time, I'm going to use a file so I can just shave off a little bit at a time. I took a file. Let's see what we've got here. Very good. We've got an F sharp flute here now, and now it's time to put in the finger holes down for the first hole. And I'm going to drill in, and again, I'm going to make this very small. If I make it too big, it could end up sharp, and there's no way to go back from sharp. But if it's flat, you can always sharpen it, and that's what you do is you sharpen it. So we've got about an eighth of an inch hole here. And this, since this is an F sharp, this hole should be an A. So let's see where we are with it. G sharp, we're very close. So all I have to do now is bring this hole up. In other words, make it rounder, and I do that with a rounded back needle file. And this is the most tedious part of making a flute, is getting the holes, getting the tuning right. But this is what makes the flute sound so good. So we've got a little bit bigger here. Let's see how close we are now. It's not much bigger yet, but we don't want to do a lot each time. We want to do a little check each time. Getting close. Let's bring it up, and I'll be back in a second. Okay, we've got it on A now, so I'm going to put five more holes in here, and then we'll come back. So I need to mark for the hole placement now, and I'll put those holes in, just as I did with this first one. Okay, so now we've got all the finger holes in, and let's take a listen to see how it sounds like this. Not bad. I think that's how it's going to sound when we get it cleaned up and everything nice and even, and all the chinks and everything sanded out. First of all, I'm going to take some fine sandpaper like this, roll it up into a cylinder shape so I can get it down into these holes. As you can see, they're ragged, and what I want to do is clean them up so they have a nice, clean sound. When things are ragged, it causes air turbulence, and air turbulence deteriorates the sound. So we clean them up so the air flows more evenly, and it has a cleaner sound. So I'll get to doing that. And then after we clean them up and sand off the ends, sand off the hard edges on the ends and everything, take it inside and wash it, wash all this lettering off, and you'll have a nice, clean pipe that you can decorate any way you want, with paints, with feathers, with whatever you like. That's the beauty of PVC, and it'll last forever unless you run over it with your pickup truck or your car or whatever. So here we go. Let's get these all cleaned up. Okay, so we've got it all cleaned up now. It looks pretty good. It's just a piece of plastic with holes in it and a piece of wood sitting on top and a cork inside. But it looks and sounds pretty good. Thanks very much for watching the video today. The techniques that I discussed are the basic techniques needed for making Native American flutes. I hope that the one that you make, if you use this video, sounds good and lasts you for years to come. If you have any questions at all, please email me in the link below, from the link below. And if you have a desire to learn more, there are more videos on YouTube by other craftsmen. Plus, I have two books out on the subject, on how to make, as well as the history of the Native American flute. You can determine a method of calculating hole placement for any size flute using any material, bamboo, wood, whatever. In my books, I go into how to make those calculations that work for any diameter. And they're basic calculations. You don't need to know trigonometry or calculus to do them. It's basic. Adding and division and multiplication. These are some of the flutes that I have made using those very basic calculations. Everything from low PVC, high PVC, high bamboo, to more traditional key bamboo, to the traditional wood, to more modern configurations, such as the drone. This is very soft wood stitching. It's a very simple method of making, and it works for any size, with minor adjustments occasionally. For the most part, those adjustments are never needed. There will be information at the end of this video about the books, but you can also find a lot more helpful videos on YouTube by other craftsmen. And I hope that you'll be able to make the flute that you want, and save yourself a lot of money, and have a lot of satisfaction doing it yourself, getting that sound. Again, if you have any questions or advice, please email me at the link below. Thanks very much for watching. Hi, me again, after the credits. PVC has writing on it, and you'll want to probably remove that. The best way I have found is with a little elbow grease, water, monami, and fine grade steel wool. Just rubbing it down, washing it under the water, with monami and steel wool will come right off. And it should last you many, many years. And it's a very durable material. Once again, thanks a lot. Bye.