After 2 ½ years, this is the fourth and last flute I can make from this material, and to some degree, I’m pretty happy about that. Red oak is already pretty hard, but the mystery mineralization throughout this wood, rendered those areas almost twice as hard. I’ve consulted over 15 woodworking folks, who really know wood, and I’ve gotten 15 guesses, and no answers. So I’m going with my personal favorite… “It’s thruster damage because the tree was growing in the heavily forested approach path of an incoming flying saucer.” This represents one of the more reasonable explanations. The flute is 21-1/8 inches in length, with a 1” bore diameter. Materials used for the mouthpiece include box elder burl between layers of African wenge, capped with this mystery oak. The fetish is cut from a block of this material, and is bonded to a base of Oklahoma red cedar.
Inlay, beginning at the mouthpiece includes a 5x7mm Lightning Ridge Australian dome cut boulder opal, flanked by 4.3mm old Tibetan turquoise cabs. Each side of the compression chamber is inlayed with 22mm disks of stabilized, twice dyed box elder burl, into which I’ve placed tiny 2.4mm Australian fire opals. Additionally, I did a subtle hand colorizing of the woods in turquoise, to visually tie in the turquoise cabs. Moving forward, the sound chamber is accented with a beautiful 11.7x14.7mm dome cut Queensland Australian boulder opal, while the finger holes include 4mm abalone cabs, and a 5.6mm black pearl. Actually it’s just half a black pearl. Lastly, the fetish has a .85ct 6mm faceted Brazilian azotic topaz set to the crown, and 2.4mm faceted African black diamonds, set as eyes.
The flute includes a removable wrap of South Dakota prairie rattlesnake skin, and additionally, the finger holes are slightly dished, and I’ll tell you why. A couple of the recording artists who play my flutes, don’t like the finger holes dished, while you folks seem to like them. I will occasionally dish the finger holes very slightly, since I sell more flutes to you folks than I do to recording artists.
The flute was tuned at a wood temperature of 73.2 degrees F, at 43% humidity.