Hallowing a Wooden Flute

Video Transcript

"So once you've chosen the wood and you've decided how big your flute is going to be which I'll tell you more about that in the next series, then the next step is to hollow out the bore of the flute. You can do that really from both sides and then glue the flute together. That's how most native flutes are made now days. The way I do it is the total hand carved way. Just kind of get a carving tool like this and make the outline of the boar of your flute on both sides, you can see those lines and just proceed to carve out the inside of that. What you want is for both sides of the board to come together in a very round kind of way so that you don't have any particular edges on the inside of the flute. So you can just spend a few minutes working on this and you'll see that you start to get the shape even now and these flutes that I hand carve this way I call it the Winnepesaukee flute. The reason I still do it by hand instead of using the router that some people do to just make a cylindrical bore is that the end flute will come out tapered. I have one over here and so it's really a lot harder to make a tapered flute with a router or any other machine tool and it's actually easier by hand, because you can get the taper just right like that."