In the grand scheme of things so long as your flute is in adjustment and there isn`t some intrinsic design flaw there is no need for another flute.

But of course something new is nice... one thing I forgot to note. You may want to get an open hole flute with a French styled open hole key design... you might as well get something that look professional. I`m too lazy to check on the flute now, but I know Gemeinhardt 3 and Yamaha 300 series has a plain open hole setup and the Armstrong 303B has the French setup.

"I know Gemeinhardt 3 and Yamaha 300 series has a plain open hole setup and the Armstrong 303B has the French setup."

What is the difference between a plain open hole setup and a french setup? Are you referring to pointed key arms?

How to open holes make a flute look professional? There are many professional flutes that are closed hole.

How many people see the open holes when you are playing?

I might have been wrong about the Yamaha 300 series being plain... the last time I searched out pics detailing the differences between the two I found a Yamaha with the same type of keys at the Gemeinhardt pictured here.

Yamaha 385 with French Open Hole
http://i3.ebayimg.com/01/i/04/f6/49/44_1_b.JPG

Gemeinhardt with Plain Open Hole
http://members.cox.net/rhartong/images/gemm3.jpg

In the French style the hole is flush with the key. In the "American?" style the hole flares above the key.

All modern professional flutes have adopted the French style, even Gemeinhardt.

The Gemeinhardt 3 series is one of the few lines that retains the plain styling. I have seen pictures of Yamaha flutes with similar styling... it could be an old style that was given up.

Pico, you wrote
"I would love to know of a flute maker that forges flute bodies"

No, of course bodies are not forged, and I don`t think I suggested that they were. But there are definitely other forms of "working" typically involved in their construction, especially "drawing". Note that if you use tenon expanding and contracting tools alternating, in a severe manner, the tenon gets so hard that it becomes close to impossible to use the tools - unless the tenon is annealed.

"The heating of metal in an of itself does not change hardness, but the compression of the metal. The thin and thick of it all. The metal itself is not softer or harder."

I`m not sure what you are trying to say here, Pico, but the FACT is that if you get a copper or silver alloy and heat it red hot, then cool it, it will DEFINITELY be a lot softer than it was before. It bends more easily and dents (a form of bending) more easily. This is the very well known process called annealing. As long as you have a suitable heat source and some brass or copper wire or sheet, you can prove this for yourself.

1. You can go to a plumbers supply yard and buy soft copper pipe. It is annealed, and soft enough to easily bend. You can also buy the hard version, which would split or tear if you tried to do the same bends.

2. When a silversmith works on a copper or silver alloy, the metal gets constantly harder, until further working would far greater force, and the metal would split. The craftsman has to quite frequently re-anneal the metal so that it returns to a soft state so that more work can be done.

3. When a severely damaged trumpet is panel-beaten, the technician may need to heat it red hot a couple of times to make the metal soft enough to work on it again.

4. When you buy copper alloys from a metal merchant, specifications tell you how soft or hard it is. This depends on the amount of work hardening or annealing it has been exposed to.

5. I make sterling silver caps for clarinet tenons, from a strip of metal. There is no way that I could fold that metal over the edges of the tenon without first heating the silver red hot. It would be simply too hard to push where I wanted it to go.

6. Think of a well known way to break copper wire.... Put a kink in it and bend it to and fro at the kink. The metal at this point gets work hardens, harder and harder, until it is brittle enough to break. Get some copper or silver wire and heat it red hot. It will now bend almost as easily as lead.

I could provide dozens more examples, and quotes from silversmithing text books.

I don`t think your statement bears up in the face of metallurgical science, nor the experience of ANYBODY doing any serious working of these alloys.

Perhaps I have misunderstood what you were saying.

"Soft" implies a low "yield stress".
"Hard" implies a high "yield Stress`.

Go to http://www.varmintal.com/arelo.htm#danger1

and scroll down a little to the table which shows brass, all the same alloy but different degress of softening or hardening, and the yield stress for each, varying from 11 to 65!

As I said before the hardness of the metal does not change only the compression. If you provide more metal content in a denser form, yes you would have a harder material or vice versa. The metal itself itself is not harder. Just the thin and thick of it all.

And we are talking, in general, of a .16" thickness of metal.

The thickness is nothing to do with the issue of work hardening or annealing. These processes do not alter thickness, nor density.

Are you just making this stuff up? If not, I would appreciate it if you could find at least some reference for what you are saying. In the interests of clarity.

Please expain exactly what you mean when you say the `COMPRESSION` changes. IN the sense you have used it, it is not an engineering term, yet you have used it as if it was.

...... i.e. according to the significant but of course limited engineering knowledge I have. (Had to add that in case somebody incorrectly thought I was a `know-all`.)

Annealing does increase density of metals and as such causes a decrease in volume which by definition is compression.

You`re arguing that the over heating of a metal to improve structure and remove impurities does not effect density?

"The heating of metal in an of itself does not change hardness, but the compression of the metal. The thin and thick of it all. The metal itself is not softer or harder."

A pound of Silver with a density of 10g/cm3 will be just as hard as another pound of silver at the same density that resulted from heating.

This thread subject has become very specific to Piko and Arak. I know that it is beyond my knowledge area, (and quite truthfully, deeper than my interest level). I am guessing that may be true of "most" of the other readers/posters on this forum.

That is okay, but probably won`t result in many other posters becoming involved.

Truth be told, I am glad someone else has an interest in these sorts of things so that I can just glean from the bottom line of their knowledge.

In other words: discuss/argue away gentleman...let me know the final tidbit wrapped up in a neat one sentence summary!!

Love ya both for assigning your brain power to this, I must go now with my limited gray matter and help yon youngsters with homework.

""The heating of metal in an of itself does not change hardness, but the compression of the metal. The thin and thick of it all. The metal itself is not softer or harder......A pound of Silver with a density of 10g/cm3 will be just as hard as another pound of silver at the same density that resulted from heating."

I acknowledge huge areas outside my knowledge base. However I have no idesa where you are getting this stuf from. Any references would be appreciated.

The bottome line is that when a copper or silver alloy is heated to red hot and cooled again, it does not matter which of the many standard hardness testing methods you use - Brinell, Vickers Rockwell..... - it will be a lot softer than if that same metal has been work hardened.

Any change in density, if indeed it occurs at all, is very, very small, and a red herring.

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/ash/images/johnstonthesisf32.gif

If you look at the linked image. You have 4 items of the same volume, same material, but different density. The left most example is the least dense and most hard the right most is more dense and soft.

If you were to heat the first item to make it more dense/softer it will become as the further right sample, but will as a result also have less volume... it is compressed.

If you were to take that first item and bang at with a hammer for a while to match the same volume of the heated material it will be of similar density and hardness.

It isn`t the heat that makes it softer, but the density (I like to use compression). Potato Potatoe.

Now that doesn`t mean if you compare Silver and Gold of the same density they`ll be the same hardness, just metals of the same element.