All you wood guys will know what I mean -this was cut back in the 1970's in the arid center of NSW Australia.
I was given it by the guy who taught me how to work wood.
And I have been looking at that old log for 6 years or more.
So I cut it and rested it for a long while, and finally milled and bored the thing - it produced only 2 whistles.
The figure in it is exceptional.
I knew it would be .. but figure in wood is not a promise of results .. a whistle has to be played, and if the wood is too figured, the probability of warping is high, so I don't usually make whistles out of this stuff.
However, this wood is so old and stable that it had to be done.
I have cut hundreds of pieces of wood - this log was so hard that I had to re-sharpen my tools.
This is no ordinary wood.
So I got 2 whistles out of a log.
Because of the extreme figure, it produced 2 whistles which I followed to completion - according to the wood.
One turned out as a good solid performing whistle, the other turned out to be a wild beast.
If you are interested in either of these, please PM me?
Best regards
(edited to add the pics of what got made:
After finishing, the wild-beast and the solid performer converged to make 2 nicely expressive and reliable instruments.
Both will perform solidly and both can be pushed hard to yield a wide expression.
After final finish these are nearly identical with 131 being very slightly louder of the 2.
Both are capable of a very wide range of timbral expression beyond what I normally expect of gidgee.
The additional effort was worth it - thank you old log!!!
Mitch
