"A Frued-ian 'Slip'?"

What a gorgeous weekend we had here in the Carolinas...crisp morning lows, cerulean skies, and pleasant, mild afternoons...oh yeah, and an extra hour of sleep! Interesting that my atomic satellite clock did not reset automatically like the cell phone and cable boxes did...go figure.

And so it was I had hoped to attack some wood for roughing out flutes after I tended to myriad errands and things-to-do early on in the weekend. A few months ago I purchased a new 1" diameter core box router bit as I knew my old 1" Viper bit had seen its better days. Finally decided to unbox the new bit and let it glide through Cocobolo, Cherry, Papua New Guinea Walnut, and Brazilian Cherry for starters. I've used Freud saw blades for years, an Italian company well-known and respected in the woodworking world...and they ain't cheap! Figured this Freud bit was a great investment.

"DOINK"

2/3 of the way through a simple 1"x4"x28" blank of Cherry there was a silent whir and no wood cutting...I carefully lifted the blank to find the head of the bit lying peacefully within millimeters of the 20,000RPM whirring shaft of the router. The shank snapped off clean in two. Normal wood and cutting, nothing unusual. I have never ever seen or heard of such a thing, but there it was, in all of it's broken glory.

Oh, I'll get a free replacement since the bit has a lifetime warranty...but I'll lose days of work waiting for the new one to arrive. I have other sized bits to use in the meantime, but the 1" bit makes the oft sought after low Es, Fs, and F#s in the Native American style flute realm. Nothing wrecks creativity like the sudden stoppage of momentum, eh fellow artists?! Ugh.

Honestly, I've got more than an ample wood supply for my flutes and other projects...but a particular piece on eBay caught my eye a couple of weeks ago. It was a 58" long piece of a gate or some wooden object that had iron pegs on either end to slide into slots. It came from a Williamsburg, VA estate around an old blacksmithing shop on the property, dating back to, or slightly before, the Civil War era.

So why would I have wanted to pursue this piece? Old nicked wood with end cracks and some old iron pieces in the end? I had my ideas, and since no one else bid on it, I got it at a good price, with shipping costing more than the wood. So why the interest?

We're talkin', conservatively, wood that has been drying for ~150 years. More than likely the wood came from a mature tree (read 'old growth')...and it was obviously dry as a bone. I figured I could easily get two lower key flutes from it, that should have a very unusual resonance and tone, given the above factors. Not often you come across 150 year-old dried wood to make into flutes...

In fact, the growth rings/grain lines are very close together, definitely old growth of either a pine or spruce member. Such tightly packed growth rings make for a much richer tone and resonance than younger trees with more widely spaced growth rings, FYI. In short order I plan on removing the extraneous pieces and planing down the main plank, which is a healthy 1.75" thick. And I'm bettin' I'll be creating two very unique sounding flutes with a bit of history attached.

Kind of reminds me of a scaled-down scenario of a great movie I'd recommend renting, "The Red Violin." When these flutes are made and start to sing, it will be very intriguing to picture the life history of the wood up to this point...