On Flute Stands...

In reference to a post on Flute Forum by someone who was seeking advice on making their own wooden flute stand for piccolo, concert flute, alto flute, and bass flute:

I'm in no position to dictate specifics that way, but here're my thoughts:

1. Ensure your dowel lengths extend past the foot joint tenon to relieve stress, especially for your alto and bass flutes. The longer the dowel lengths, the more stable you can hold your flute, but the more annoying it is to "load" the flutes on.

2. The diameter of your dowels should be close to the ID of the flute that it needs to hold to keep the flute's centre of mass centred over the axis of the dowel as possible to use the longitudinal strength of the tube to hold its weight as much as possible while vertical. In other words, don't have too much wiggle room built in -- just enough to slip the flute body on and off with some (but not complete) focus.

2. Whatever material is in contact with the inner tube of the flute should be softer than the material of the flute itself to avoid scratching the finish of the inner walls. You might need to consult some surface hardness scales for details on this. Geometry can help a little (i.e. tapering of the end that points upwards), but you need to take the whole centre of mass aspect (points 1 and 2) into account when you do that. From my observation, the main points of contact that you need to worry about are the upper edge of the dowel, and perhaps the lower edge. The rest of the body of the dowel does not really contact any point of the flute body at rest, and to really affect that would require a particular effort by the user to "scrape" the dowel.

3. The base of the dowel (where the end edge of the foot joint is supported) should dampen the inevitable drop when one releases the flute upon the dowel, i.e. make sure it is thick enough.

4. I don't think that moisture control is that big a deal, mostly because I don't think that the amount of moisture (from condensation) within the flutes is sufficient to swell your unsealed wood enough to get past the wiggle room. The metal flutes do not change their ID from humidity, while the wooden ones might. The range of the ambient humidity of where you use the pegs are probably the bigger issue for this.

5. This probably goes without saying, but do ensure that your base is sufficiently massive (either in absolute mass or in the amount of moments generated relative to the centre of masses of the mounted flutes) to support the protuding tubes of flutes to keep things in stable equilibrium. Since it sounds like you are intending to do a combination stand, this might not be as straightforward as it seems.

I'm sure someone else will have much more specific information, but I hope what I have here can help you.