The Burping Bedpost Approach to Making a Racket Regarding Retirement

Would you like a serving of Boaring Bassoons with your Bore Sausage?

Oh my gosh! Either I was being pranked last night by a friend (Saturday evening) or this person who I have known forever has some blinders up or was enjoying an edible. I will call him “Boaris”. He will know that this is all about him when he reads this and I hope he was indeed pranking me. Or not. My sharp reply was delivered with a serving of delightful visciousness. He first emailed me to congratulate me on my retirement, and see if I had time for a one on one visit (I don’t but invited him to a party we are hosting for friends who are moving to Portugal at the end of the month which will also be my retirement party.

At 9:08PM he emails me back:

Sounds like you're already overbooked. Lark is first week of August, so
I'll try again in September.

Question on small handed flutes. From physics, tone is the vibrating air
volume (hence square organ pipes). If you make a "small handed" flute
you either have to push the holes farther apart (problematic with small
hands) or the wall thinner. I've seen broken wood flutes and they've got
~ 3/32" walls. Much less then that gets fragile. Macedonian kavals have
thin walls but they don't have joints and they live in pairs on fitted
dowels. You also could dish the finger holes a bit but then you get into
hole alignment problems (hence kavals with two bottom holes for left and
right handed players).

Where do you get the internal volume while maintaining a cylindrical bore?

I reply immediately:

Boaris, I am retired and done answering such questions, except for my potential apprentice. Time for you to ask someone else or figure it out yourself.

And asking me such questions on a Saturday evening at after 9pm? Really? Do you really have no sense of boundaries and an any idea of what an appropriate time to ask me such questions, maybe in fewer words?

Uhm, no. I do not do this.

I will be very busy after Camp with recovery, construction projects, glass flutes, DjangoFest, a new puppy and travel to Galicia. Come to that party instead, assuming it happens.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!

My output of flutes could have doubled or tripled but instead I spent probably 15+ work years out of the last 45 work years answering such inquiries. Some potential clients would send 25+ emails asking questions that are easily answere on my website, and then decide at the end to take their business elsewhere. I will use my “Snake Woman” email address in the future and simply send everything that goes to my current email address to Spam Land. OR simply get rid of that address. Because I can. And should given that Musk and the Government has all of our data.

On another note or notes, we are going to make a racket. Or actually Racketts - and maybe some Dulcians. I have already commission a quintet of Rackett Player Wannabees of nearby musicians and I we wll call ourselves the Chaos Theory Quintet. It turns out that there are 3D printable STL files available online of such instruments.

Nancy mentioned that she had a similar 5th grade tale of woe to my tale of getting stuck with playing flute She wanted to play the Burping Bedpost - also known as the Bassoon. But Nancy’s dad offered her a flute that he got for cheap from one of his Army buddies. So she also suffered from being a flute player. She said it was probably too late to learn the bassoon with its keyed complexities and lousy ergonomics.

I said not so fast and asked if she knew what a Sausage Bassoon was. I played the above video for her and she immedialy said “YES!!!!” So this is one of my first tasks as a retired instrument maker. Actually we may simply order some instruments. My friend Phil and Gayle make these down in Oregon.