FundyBrian’s Explorations

Today I made a couple of driftwood flute stands.
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You have to look at a great number of pieces of driftwood to find anything suitable, as well as being small enough to carry home. A bit of sanding on the bottom with my angle grinder made them flat enough to be stable.
I just got a laser engraver to burn my Fundy Flutes maker’s mark on the flutes as well as the key signature.
 
Today I made a couple of driftwood flute stands.
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You have to look at a great number of pieces of driftwood to find anything suitable, as well as being small enough to carry home. A bit of sanding on the bottom with my angle grinder made them flat enough to be stable.
I just got a laser engraver to burn my Fundy Flutes maker’s mark on the flutes as well as the key signature.
Wonderful!!
 
Today I made a couple of driftwood flute stands.
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You have to look at a great number of pieces of driftwood to find anything suitable, as well as being small enough to carry home. A bit of sanding on the bottom with my angle grinder made them flat enough to be stable.
I just got a laser engraver to burn my Fundy Flutes maker’s mark on the flutes as well as the key signature.
Such a multitalented man, you are!
 
Well, actually I have made a couple. It’s just a question of whether they are any good.
Melody is so elusive. When I’m playing the flute and I get an idea I have to record it immediately. Even if I play it over and over for a few minutes if it isn’t recorded I will forget it in a short time.
 
It’s just a question of whether they are any good.
“Good” art and music is in the eyes & ears of the beholder. It’s good if you think it’s good. There will always be someone who loves it, and someone who doesn’t. If we only created for the acceptance of someone else.... well, we might not ever create anything. :sneaky:
 
“Good” art and music is in the eyes & ears of the beholder. It’s good if you think it’s good. There will always be someone who loves it, and someone who doesn’t. If we only created for the acceptance of someone else.... well, we might not ever create anything. :sneaky:
Nicely said!
 
Fundy Flutes has become a “thing”.
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I can now laser etch (burn) my maker’s mark on the back of my flutes, along with the key signature.
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Some Fundy Flutes on display at TownsEnd Gallery.
PureShot, Fusion, Skew.
Fabulous!!! Did you create the logo? I think you should open an Etsy store for the flutes.
 
Very spiffy. :thumbs: Does the crooked bore of the flute on the right alter the sound at all?
I wondered about that, too. My research found that as long as the bore is a consistent diameter it doesn’t matter if the bore isn’t straight.
 
Fabulous!!! Did you create the logo? I think you should open an Etsy store for the flutes.
I’ve been trying a new FB page so far. The thing that brings the biggest results is when Fabi shares one of my posts on her page. The numbers go from about 12 to to over 200 overnight.
I don’t know much about Etsy.
Yes I made the logo and the wave style totem design for Fundy Flutes. Affinity Designer is great for that sort of thing. The laser etching works great on the flutes. The etching has real depth to it so it isn’t just like something printed on. It is about as easy as using a printer except the software has no explanations how it works so you have to experiment a while to figure things out.
So far I’ve sold 3 flutes! Not on FB, though. I find there are some I don’t want to part with.
I have another flute glued up this evening. Lots of clamps on it (22). Maybe tomorrow it will go on the lathe. It’s cold out in the greenhouse now. At least it isn’t windy in there. It’s better when it’s sunny.
I think I will have a grand opening next weekend. The 3 flutes sold have been for Xmas gifts.
 
Frosty.
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In the age of thermopane windows we don’t get frost like this on the house windows anymore. The greenhouse has single pane windows and they get plenty of frost. As long as you catch it before the sun melts it. It requires some moisture inside too and the greenhouse has a dirt floor as well as a bunch of firewood drying.
Moment Macro, PureShot, Fusion.
The main difficulties I had doing this were cause by the wide field of view on the iPhone lens as well as too much depth of field. Switching to the tele 2x lens helped some. It was hard working around the light and dark blobs in the background. Switching to my mirrorless camera (no more DSLR) and 90mm macro lens gave me a much narrower angle of view which made it much easier to manage the background. Also the aperture control allowed me to adjust the depth of field to my liking to get the background more out of focus. Generally speaking, in photography with the iPhone, it stacks up pretty well against other cameras. But this situation really points out it’s limitations.
 
I just finished this flute last night. Focus Stacking.
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This is Western Red Cedar, key of C minor pentatonic, 1-1/4” bore 32mm, length 28” or 71cm, Native America style flute.
You know from experience that to get the whole flute in focus this close with an iPhone is impossible with a single picture.
25 image focus stack in Camera Pixels, 2x lens, developed in Affinity Photo.
And yes, it sounds wonderful.
 
Holy Smokes is this ever complicated! Once you start looking at the fees they charge it gets bewildering. All the ifs and ors VAT taxes fees everything different for each country, etc. And everything has a fee attached to it. I know who is making the money on Etsy.
 
Holy Smokes is this ever complicated! Once you start looking at the fees they charge it gets bewildering. All the ifs and ors VAT taxes fees everything different for each country, etc. And everything has a fee attached to it. I know who is making the money on Etsy.
I suppose it's similar to a brick & mortar shop where you'd have to pay rent and utilities.
 
No picture of this. After the heavy rains of the past couple of days I scouted my drainage ditches to clear out any blockages. The fall grasses bend down and block the ditches. Clearing it all out is quite a job. I also found the top broken off the neighbour’s tree and fallen into my drainage ditch causing a certain amount of blockage. I tried to pull it out but it was much too heavy, about 8” diameter, so a pretty big piece of tree. By that time it was nearly dark and I was soaking wet.
Today I spent my time with the chainsaw cutting up fallen trees and raking grass out of ditches. I’ve never seen so many trees getting blown over - mostly uprooted, not broken. I’ve lived here since 1983 and the woods always seemed to stand up to any kind of weather. Things have definitely changed. I

But this evening I prepared another flute inside before gluing it together. Maybe tomorrow I’ll have some time to work on it, except, I also have to go to town for errands.
 
Actually it was the part where they were recommending you seek legal advice in each country you hope to do business.
Why would it say that? I’m guessing it’s just normal fine print. I have friends with an EBay store and it works out great. I’m guessing Etsy is the same.
 
My latest flute, just completed, and my first flute made of cherry.
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This flute is in the key of D minor pentatonic. Naturally my Fundy Flutes pictures need a Fundy theme. This one was made using Focus Stacking using the Camera Pixels app On my iPhone, and processed in Affinity Photo on my iPad.

In my first attempt making this photo I photographed the flute on a white background, which was fine in itself but when placed on the photo background had too much reflected lighting coming from the bottom, the white surface. I also tried a grey background which had a texture and that proved to terrible at the masking stage, and this one was made on a black paper background which looked more like dark grey than black. I previously tried a similar photo on a black velvet background (really black) and you start out thinking you are simply photographing an object to be cut out from its original background with masking and the background doesn’t really matter much. Wrong. The light reflected from the background is part of the overall lighting and can be plainly seen on the subject. In a similar way, when you set out to make close up photos you should be conscious of what colour clothing you are wearing because it will show up in the picture.

The whole idea of dropping a subject onto another photo background is fraught with perils, especially if you don’t really know what background you will end up using and the lighting angles don’t match properly. But if the viewers are not very critical of those details it serves the purpose well enough. Right now a real photo on location would be more along snow and ice themes, and oddly enough Native American style flutes are more at home in the sunny south than the snowy north. Likewise, flutes are not made to get wet.
 
So you see - proper image manipulating is not that easy as it seems! :sneaky:
Very nice peace of craftsmanship!
 
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