Joe

> Initial thought for construction is to start with a set of hollow
> cross-sectional templates like we used to do for the hulls of wooden ship
> models.  A rough shape would be built up of pieces of walnut glued up to
> look something like an old-fashioned contour model of a mountain or a hill.
> That would be rasped and chiseled to close to fair, and then finished with
> spoke shaves.  PROBLEM  what about the foot and the neck?  They would
> ideally be turned, but how does one turn an elliptical shape?

That would work and would not take too long.  Perhaps turning it round first,
then knocking off the high sides to bring them into shape with the templates
> 
> Anyway, once the thing is faired and smoothed and is true to the templates
> it would be time to flute.  I really don't know where to start.  The flutes
> would run from the foot to the neck, so they would have to get wider and
> narrower as they rose and fell.  I guess one would carefully mark off the
> tops and bottoms of the lines where they hit the neck and foot an let the
> swell take care of itself.  But how does one cut straight, true lines across
> something like that?

I have thought of this a bit for a project in mind.  I might mount it in a lathe
and devise a way to hold it so that the flute I am working on in along the top -
for me, it would be the right height for that sort of work.  I know you can buy,
and therefore make, a disc that mounts on the piece that has some sort of
register holes in it for making everthing even - 20 flutes, 30 flutes, whatever
you decide on on

Good luck, andtake pictures

Ed