My friends at work took me out to lunch during my last week with the company. As if it wasn’t hard enough to say goodbye to these people I’ve spent over a decade coming to know and love, they set aside a special time to go out to eat, followed by a few rounds of bowling.
We caught up on old times, remembered the challenges we’d faced and the laughs we’d shared, and just spent some time enjoying each other’s company. Now, the company and the people therein are really good about giving good send offs - so I figured we’d have a day with some fun like this lined up, but I was completely floored when they presented me with this beautiful quena…this, was completely unexpected.
The quena was made, from the best of what I’ve been able to surmise, by Tito Benito, of Peru. It looks to me like jacaranda wood with a bone mouthpiece. I played a few notes right there in the diner when they presented it to me. I don’t always display a lot of emotion, so I’m not sure they realize just how touched I was, but this will easily be my new favorite, if only because holding it reminds me of these dearest of friends. I’m a bit misty-eyed in writing about it, it’s a goodbye I never anticipated saying.
Of course, while the flute was beautiful right out of the box, you all know I tend to want to put my own stamp on things - so I modified some of the visual appearance of the flute almost immediately…I hope it’s not considered offensive to do so, but somehow I don’t think they would mind.
The first thing I wanted to do was buff down the shiny coat, but doing so meant removing the bindings. On this flute, the bindings were made with some sort of multi-colored, semi-opaque fishing line type string. They were very pretty, but I tend to lean towards simple things, so I didn’t try to save them, I just untied them and used steel wool to take off most of the polymer coat. I didn’t take pictures as I did this, but once it was thinned out to nearly bare wood, I gave it some white mineral oil and wax.
Since I don’t have any other strings for bindings right now, I chose to use the leftover twine I died red for the pipe I made recently. I think the reddish hue will play nicely off of the jacaranda and bone of the bare flute.
The twine always starts of really frayed and frizzy looking, so my first step is always to cut off the outliers.
Next step is always to try to saturate the twine with wood glue. The first time I did this with the red twine I wondered if it would always show as having yellow in between each wrap, but it turned out nicely in the pipe, so now I know it can be done to nice effect.
Once the bindings were done, I put together a small design to engrave in the flute, commemorating the kind friends who gave it to me. The flute’s name will be OHANA.
Props to Benito Tito, this flute is beautiful and plays very nicely. And endless thanks to my friends, who I’ve enjoyed getting to know over the last 12 years.
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