G'day all,

Thanks for the great response; I was surprised when the thread died out before (and realised I should have got involved then, but my current flute making obsession hadn't reached fever pitch).

Amos: I had seen 19th century illustrations of such a flute, but the steel engraving didn't give me enough clues as to material and texture, so I took it for a straight bamboo or a heavy reed. The flute in this cut appeared to have the carven figure of the fore-parts of a horse forming the windcutter, so it must have come from one of the Plains tribes.

jeffp: Your description of the construction is plain to me and explains how they would make such a hardwood flute without recourse to a lathe or steel cutting tools. I should have thought of that approach myself, as I have used it to make 'solid' wood sheaths for belt knives, covering the reassembled and glued timber with a hand-sewn outer layer of (wet) leather that shrinks tight. The technique is also used in India and was probably the common answer to this problem in non-industrial societies.

Crowhugger: "...Which notes in Amazing Grace fall outside the diatonic scale?" None - as I see it, but the terms diatonic and chromatic obviously have different weights in different cultures.

Regards,

Bob Bolton