FundyBrian’s Explorations

Here is a jig I just made to make it possible to route a piece of wood, such as a branch, that it too crooked to work on a regular router table.
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This jig replaces the usual round baseplate on a router. It has 2 guides instead of just one that a router table would have. Both are adjusted the same distance from the router bit. No need to measure. Just use corresponding marks. You set your width for the widest part of the branch

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When your branch gets narrower you twist it between the guides so it remains in close contact with both guides. It self-centres the routed part in the branch


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Here is two halves of a crooked branch just routed. You can see the branch curves up and down and even has a twist but it routed with no problem.
 
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.
Great info!
 
Raven totem on a recent flute.
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The Raven head is made of cherry wood. I wanted it to be a contrasting tone to the light wood of the flute but the cherry wasn’t dark enough. How to make it darker. I didn’t have any ebony on hand and even if I did it would be really tough to carve.
Digging around in my miscellaneous bottles and tubes I found... black leather dye. At least 25 or 30 years old since it has been at least that long since the Tandy leather shop closed up. But the lid opened and it wasn’t dried out inside!
The wood soaked up the dye like a sponge. It produced the same type of darkness as a Raven and even has a bit of sheen at certain angles of the light, just like a real Raven.

Hey! This flute is for Fabi. I was very surprised (and delighted) when she expressed an interest.
 
Raven totem on a recent flute.
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The Raven head is made of cherry wood. I wanted it to be a contrasting tone to the light wood of the flute but the cherry wasn’t dark enough. How to make it darker. I didn’t have any ebony on hand and even if I did it would be really tough to carve.
Digging around in my miscellaneous bottles and tubes I found... black leather dye. At least 25 or 30 years old since it has been at least that long since the Tandy leather shop closed up. But the lid opened and it wasn’t dried out inside!
The wood soaked up the dye like a sponge. It produced the same type of darkness as a Raven and even has a bit of sheen at certain angles of the light, just like a real Raven.

Hey! This flute is for Fabi. I was very surprised (and delighted) when she expressed an interest.
This is absolutely gorgeous! :notworthy: :inlove: Just stunning... and how cool is it that leather dye was still usable? These flutes are works of art.
 
It was a dark and stormy night... I mean, it was a rather dull and snowy day today.
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The tide is coming in.
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A different take on sand ripples. After the tide as come and gone all the snow will be melted from the beach.
Beautiful images. Almost makes me look forward to the return of winter later today. It’s been unseasonably warm here for a few weeks.
 
Beautiful images. Almost makes me look forward to the return of winter later today. It’s been unseasonably warm here for a few weeks.
It has been unusually cold here the past few days. -18°C now and supposed to drop to -25°C tonight, not including windchill. Blowing snow, drifting. But compared to the big storm in Newfoundland we’re having an easy time of it.
 
A friend brought me the pieces of this old lathe that had been languishing in his garage for many years.
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I’ve been working at tidying up the pieces and cleaning as much rust off of it as possible. Now it’s all together and working. I had some trouble getting the motor going but it’s OK now. There are a couple of new parts I added as well.
For you history buffs this is a Shop Smith 10ER. Made sometime around 1951 or thereabouts. That makes it quite antique yet fully functional.
This is bigger than my other lathe so I can make bigger flutes . Anxious to get flute making!

Other than that I’ve been painting inside the house, the front wall in particular from the kitchen, through the dining room, to the living room. My painting this evening went down to the last drops in the can.
 
What color? :D
Spice Delight is the name of the colour. That doesn’t help much does it. It is a light colour, covering the dark brick red that was there before, sort of light yellow, but with a bit more orange. That sounds dreadful. It is a yellow, but not a wishy-washy pale yellow. That bit of orange or cinnamon gives it the spice, I guess. And Fabi is delighted. It brightens up the dining room area a lot.

The kitchen wall is the same colour, no more old wallpaper. What a struggle getting that off - another story. The oak trim looks nice against the Spice Delight.

I’ve also found it to be a difficult colour to photograph accurately. And the paint shop had a lot of difficulty mixing another can to match. In fact they failed. The formulation for the base paint has changed since we bought the first cans which required a different colour formula. The name of the colour is still the same but it doesn’t match. Then they tried adjusting the colour to bring it closer. They used what looks like good instruments to measure the old colour samples and a computer to calculate the adjusted formula. In the store it looked pretty good but a test on the wall (under where the moulding would hide it) reveals it to have a greenish tinge. “Custom mixed colours are not refundable”
There goes $70.
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This is our test spot where it would be hidden under the moulding. The darker part in the middle comes close to what it looks like. The light spot to the left is what the new version looks like. In fact that’s what the colour under the darker part looks like and a Fabi did not like it a bit. So the darker part is the last of the old can. But as you look at it from different angles and with different light reflections the colour looks a little different. The test patch for the greenish version is just above this but I didn’t make a picture of it.
 
My new Peak Design travel carbon fibre tripod has arrived! This was a Kickstarter project.
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Shown here with Fabi’s iPhone mounted using the included mobile mount which stores in the bottom of the centre column.
This has to be the most beautifully designed tripod I have ever seen. Almost all of the unused space between the legs has been eliminated making it noticeably more compact.
The ball head uses an upside down design which saves a lot of weight and space.
 
My new Peak Design travel carbon fibre tripod has arrived! This was a Kickstarter project.
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Shown here with Fabi’s iPhone mounted using the included mobile mount which stores in the bottom of the centre column.
This has to be the most beautifully designed tripod I have ever seen. Almost all of the unused space between the legs has been eliminated making it noticeably more compact.
The ball head uses an upside down design which saves a lot of weight and space.
Nice! What's the height when fully extended?
 
Nice! What's the height when fully extended?
Max height = 60”, 152.4cm
Column down = 51.3”, 130.2cm
Lowest height = 5.5”, 14cm
Collapsed length = 15.5”, 39.4cm
Collapsed width = 3.1”, 7.9cm
Max load = 20 Lb., 9.1kg

guaranteed for life.
 
Global News TV interview this afternoon.
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This was the sit-down interview portion in the gallery, backed by a bunch of my flutes. Fabi made the photo watching from the stairway. Shelly recorded the video on an iPhone! How appropriate. Actually she had 3 iPhones including a new iPhone 11 with 3 lenses that she only just got and didn’t have set up yet.
It will be broadcast Thursday evening at the end of the 6 pm news show. Later, also available on the Global News website.
Shelly Steeves stayed for 3 hours and she made many clips. She even did a short interview with a Fabi while I was setting up equipment for the next setting and it is supposed to be a secret what they said. Shelly was mostly interested in my driftwood flutes but I don’t have many of those. We all had a very enjoyable time and the time passed quickly. I hope it turns out well.
Edit: Oh, yes, Monday got snowed out. Postponed to Wednesday, which was a beautiful day.
 
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Global News TV interview this afternoon.
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This was the sit-down interview portion in the gallery, backed by a bunch of my flutes. Fabi made the photo watching from the stairway. Shelly recorded the video on an iPhone! How appropriate. Actually she had 3 iPhones including a new iPhone 11 with 3 lenses that she only just got and didn’t have set up yet.
It will be broadcast Thursday evening at the end of the 6 pm news show. Later, also available on the Global News website.
Shelly Steeves stayed for 3 hours and she made many clips. She even did a short interview with a Fabi while I was setting up equipment for the next setting and it is supposed to be a secret what they said. Shelly was mostly interested in my driftwood flutes but I don’t have many of those. We all had a very enjoyable time and the time passed quickly. I hope it turns out well.
Edit: Oh, yes, Monday got snowed out. Postponed to Wednesday, which was a beautiful day.

Fundy Flutes was featured today on TV Global News in an interview by Shelly Steeves!
How cool is this!!!! You’re famous!! ;) Congrats Brian!
 
What a wonderful interview!!! Your flutes are beautiful works of art, and I hope this piece helps bring them to more people. :inlove: :notworthy: And Fabi cracked me up!! :lol: (I find the sound very beautiful and meditative, but I don’t live with you... ;) )
 
Wildfires are the equal of hurricaines as far as scary things go. Earthquakes are a distant third.

i think that would be a fair call here, as well. Except we call them cyclones. And floods probably trump earthquakes since our country is one dirty great big rock.
 
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