[reikimaster]

Hello all. I recently started coming back to things I enjoyed before life took over. I've also discovered some things I didn't know I knew. Besides teh normal honey-do list of making shutters and beds and backyard structures, I've also discovered that I like to make flutes. Native American style flutes. My "woodshop" if you could even call it that, had really dwindled down to about nothing. Now I have a small band saw, a couple of routers, table saw, circular saw, along with an assortment of hand tools like planes, spokeshaves, etc.

I make the flutes with a router which is how I happened to find you all. I don't have a lathe. So I split the stock, route the slow air chamber and main bore in matching halves, build the sound-creating parts with small drills and rifler files, then rejoin the 2 halves. Then I take the square blank and have to make it round like a flute so I made a jig to hold the blank and my router sits on top. I turn the blank by hand between 2 "centers" and slowly advance the router. Then I just have to figure out where to put the finger holes and tune it up!

Probably more than you needed to know by way of introduction, but there you have it. Very glad to find this place and all these nice folks from whom I hope to learn more.

Charlie

 

[reikimaster]

Dr Zook I liked your signature. We flutemakers say there's 2 kinds of wood. Flutewood and firewood.

let's see if I can get a picture in here... might be too big... not sure...
It shows my very first flute at the bottom, the one in the middle is newer, and the top one is a style almost lost but being taught to me by a Lakota Sioux who is now disabled and won't be making flutes any more... sadly...