Ugly Boy Flutes

A whale of a flute...and it's no fluke!  Well, part of it is, I guess...

(click on pics to enlarge)

I think it was 1.5 years ago that while walking Mercy on a trail I found a little 3-inch plastic Orca some child had dropped.  At the time I thought I should make an Orca flute or make a block like the toy, as it had a neat shape.  Basically, I just started messing around with ideas. I had a foot-long chunk of Sapele (suh-PEE-lee) that I mused could serve as the body for a very different style of flute, building the flute mechanism into the body itself.

I cut the large rectangle about a third up from the bottom, lengthwise.  I routed only the thinner section, given my limited flute length, which makes the design like one of my flat-bottomed half-pipes.  As you'll see in the photos below, to play this flute you roll the Orca over and blow through its mouth.

The fins and fluke are made of Bubinga, and only until a week ago I had no base on which to display the flute.  I was originally thinking of driftwood, though I didn't have any on hand.  But I did unearth a big piece of Manzanita root I'd forgotten about, and decided to scoop a big piece out of the top to look like a wave and hold the flute.  Some hand-rubbed finishing set it off handsomely.

To hold the Orca in place, I added a small wooden peg that goes into one of the two top playing holes.  The large hole in the photo below is simply the 'end' of the flute...air has to exit somewhere for these flutes to work.  The bigger challenge was to design a block that was integrated into the flute and didn't use a leather tie...the answer was to take small thin pieces of wood, angling the inner edges to 45 degrees, thus building a snug slot for the block.  Once I got the design working properly, I sanded down the outside so it blended beautifully.

With a simple pressure the block can be slid out easily...

The flute is a tad under 12" long, and is tuned to ultra-high Bb Verdi tuning (A432).  The aerosol can gives a good size reference...

...and it was 'adopted' just last night!  Haven't even made a recording with it yet, but that's on my to-do list before I mail it.

As a good friend suggested, could you call this an orcarina?....  :-)