How To Make Wood Ocarina - Hand Tools / Woodwind 

How To Make Wood Ocarina - Hand Tools / Woodwind
Welcome back for another Smoky Earth Skills
Crafting a wooden Ocarina from scratch in the wilderness with only hand tools. I search for the perfect wood, something with color and not too dense for carving. Pin Cherry seems to be ideal for what I'm going for. I cut out my Ocarina blank, cut and craft a working table for using the gouge.
I start to gouge the inner chambers of each half. It is important to be careful when gouging the chamber to not break through the other side, 1/4" - 1/2" wall thickness is ideal. After you have your chambers complete, you can now move on to the windway and sound hole. The windway depth should be close to 1/16", leave a 1/4" of surface area between the lip and the chamber. That area between the lip and chamber should be less of a depth than the rest of the windway, in order for the lip to cut the air. Start your sound hole before getting too far with the windway, it is okay to work back and forth on these two parts. The two halves need to be completely flat in order to be able to test it and for it to make sound.
Tuning is done by starting with your first finger hole and moving up one hole at a time, make sure it goes up one whole note before moving to the next hole. Going back to tweak the hole size after finishing is helpful. I oil my Ocarinas with Preserve, a nice exotic nut oil blend.
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Tools Used:
1/4" Gouge
1" Gouge
1-1/2" Gouge
1/4" Flat File
Exacto Knife
Epoxy
Hatchet
Saw
Preserve Oil
/ sammysmokies