My copy is made from Maple.
This is my copy. It was my first foray into key making, and I had a lot of fun cutting out the brass and filing and polishing it, and making the mechanism work. I had trouble with the key fouling the fontanelle when in the raised position, so the note played flat because it was shaded by the key.
The key makes reaching the lowest note a pleasure - many tenors present quite a stretch in doing so.
The fontanelle is a very thin cylinder of wood perforated by many tiny holes. Its chief function is to protect and hide the key mechanism but by the time I had finished it I felt like making another cover to protect the fontanelle!
I made a stupid mistake when the instrument was nearing completion - The foot is reamed to a bit of a flare, with the same tool that is used to make the bore. I over reamed this flare, ruining it for good. the lowest note now plays c sharp instead of c. Quite useful for playing in d of course, as there is no way of making a c sharp otherwise. Some day I will make another instrument and get it right!
The original ivory has shrunk to an oval section, making it impossible to guess what the original bore was. The bore profile shows a distinct constriction or choke, typical of instruments of this period.
http://www.music.ed.ac.uk/euchmi is the website for the museum that houses the original.
Mr Arnold Myers, the curator of this museum said very kind words about my copy when he saw it, and invited me to Edinburgh to view the original and play the several copies that were made for that purpose.
I think the copying was undertaken by Peter Spohr and presented in the international Symposium of Musical Acoustics, but I havent yet tracked down the paper.
My instrument plays the octave and a half that would be expected of a renaissance tenor, with a very acceptable tone.
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