This material continues to be one of my favorite tone woods, although it is significantly reluctant to become a flute during the build.

Woods used beginning at the mouthpiece, include hand colorized box elder burl between layers of SE Asian thuya burl, and capped with the huangana negra. Each side of the compression chamber is set with 19mm box elder as well, while the fetish block is cut from the HN, bonded to a base of Oklahoma red cedar for moisture control. Each side of the fetish consists of layers of abalone, mappa burl, yew, quilted maple, and Hawaiian koa. Many years ago I envisioned opposing horses, representing “Fight or flight”, and expressed that concept with a few fetish blocks. I chose to revisit the concept for this instrument.

Inlay begins at the mouthpiece, with a 6×15 Australian boulder opal, flanked by 4mm turquoise dots. The disks to each side of the compression chamber are themselves, accented with 6mm cabs of spiny oyster. Moving forward, the sound chamber is inset with a 17x27mm Mexican crazy lace agate, followed by four 5mm abalone dots and a 6mm rainbow topaz accenting the finger holes. Lastly, the forward facing horse, head held high, has a 4mm orange, faceted Mexican fire opal set to the crown and 2.6mm Almandine garnets set as eyes. The retreating horse has a yellow faceted 4mm Mexican fire opal set to the crown, and 2.8mm hematite beads set as eyes.

Additionally I added a permanent wrap of distressed rawhide because it’s fun to make without using any glue.

The flute was tuned at a wood temp. of 78.1°F, an ambient temp. of 72.4°F, and a humidity factor of 66%, at sea level.