Kokopelli, Part 1

Hello all, long time no write. But with summer around the corner, I finally have time to do more extra curricular activities again.

Now I have the distinct advantage of working for a newspaper, I trawled through a local section (before it went to print) and stumbled across a class for making wooden flutes. Having taken a class making candles from various materials like wax, animal fat, oil, from the same instructors, I knew I would come away with new knowledge, a couple more skills and a neat trinket I made myself. Sold.

I snapped a quick picture off of the then-unprinted information detailing the time and place of the wooden flute class.

The wooden flute making class, pattered in Native American style, is a three-part class hosted by the Sarqit Outdoor Living School. These folks do all sorts of neat survival classes, including tanning hides, blacksmithing, a ton of crafts and general wilderness survival skills. I can attest our instructors are an interesting pair.

For the first day of class, we learned our flutes would be made from sotol, a member of the yucca family, which was harvested in Arizona. I imagined we would have had something much smaller to work with--a flute body that was a foot long or so. These yucca "trunks" were cut into roughly 18"-24" pieces with roughly a 2" diameter.

Our instructor went on to tell us we would clean the pieces, split them down the middle, and hollow out two matching chambers on the interior.

We get lectured on the steps of making a flute for the first class.

We had four students appear today, myself included, and we each chose a piece of sotol to carve.

The raw stalks of sotol that are destined to become flutes.

 Clean and halve

We all watched as our instructor took a machete and raked away all the dried growth on the outside of the stalk. Then he lined up to blade at the top and used a sturdy, heavy stick to set the machete into the head of the wood and continued to pound the opposite end of the blade until the stalk cut cleanly into two. (Master note: It's a good idea to keep the handle lower than the tip of the blade for better control.)

Then it was our turn. I was sitting there thinking, 'We really get to wield a machete?' 

We did.

I'm pleased to report I didn't loose any fingers or suffer any bodily injury while hacking away at my stalk. It was actually a lot of fun. I asked where our instructors got their machetes, to which they responded the pieces were gifts. And most machetes sold in stores are a bit more of the showy variety rather than the functional sort. And a saw-machete was somewhat useless, though having a machete and a saw often go hand in hand so it's a good idea to have both, if separate. Good to know.

Drawing lines

Next we had to mark up what needed to be carved out. Native Americans used a lot of hand measurements like their hand widths and fingers for carving, which was exactly what we did. The compression chamber (the recess a player will blow directly into) was measured to the size of my fist. The block was about an inch in length or roughly my first knuckle. The sound chamber comprised the remaining length of the stalk.

We also had to mark a 1/4" line along the edges of both halves as guidelines for the hollow of the sound chamber, as well as mark the compression chamber and windway.

The beginnings of my wooden flute pictured beside an example piece brought in by our instructors. You can see the narrow windway, the compression chamber, block, and sound chamber outlined in purple.

My stalk was a bit of a challenge because as you can see, it curves. I was very careful tracing my lines, but I still messed up a bit in a few places. But I figured so long as I understood what needed to be cut and what needed to remain, I felt I'd be all right.

It needs a hook

The pictures cut out immediately here because I became so engrossed in what I was doing. Carving out wood turns out to be very labor-intensive work. Our tools were knives and hook knives.

A hook knife, carved knife, crooked knife, bent knife. It cuts wood.

Feeling very much the caveman, it took me a solid half hour before I figured out the trick was to pull the blade toward yourself. The opposite was exhausting and much less effective. But when I finally got it, I was soon sitting in a pile of wood shavings. Not to say it was easy, it wasn't, but I felt I was making a dent in the work. Literally.

We chatted while we carved. I had a few good rejoinders when I was paying attention, but I was chiefly set on widening that darn hollow. It took the majority of the class time and I was last to finish.

Sanding

Having cut the compression and sound chambers for both halves, I joined the other students in sanding down the rough edges of the chambers. We used a 100 grit. My hand was red from the carving and intense heat from friction didn't help it much. Another ten minutes to smooth out the interior and I asked if I was ready yet for gluing. Our teacher told me one of my halves was too thick on the foot end of the flute. I agreed. This was the second half I did and I was struggling to thin that foot-to-head end.

I sat back down and went back to carving with the hook knife (gave my pointer finger a new blister) and sanded it all down again. Because heat and friction really are good for--yeah.

I got approved for the second round. Thank goodness, class time was already over and I was holding my poor instructors from going home.

Gluing

The final step of the night was gluing that narrow 1/4" seam for both halves of the flute. Our instructor was pleased to get to this step because we would have more time to create our birds. (See next post.) I was last to glue, but I stuck the pieces neatly together, wiped off any beads on the outside and we put five clamps on the body to keep everything in place. 

It has a week to set.

To be continued next week.

Happy weekend.