Wooden Musical Instruments

Native American Flutes

The Kokopelli intarsia now resides at the home of my dear friend, Kokopelli the Flute Crafter, whom you can contact from this page if you are interested in handcrafted Native American flutes. His work is the best that I have ever seen, and he is one of the extreme few who also crafts the hauntingly lovely tuned Apache-style double flutes. In fact, here are some examples of his signed work that I currently own:

My Pterodactyl Flute - A One-of-a-Kind Delight

Sometimes wood, especially aromatic cedar, just cries out to be something spectacular, and when it works, it can be awesome!

Terry carved this Pterodactyl Flute especially for me. If you look closely at the flute, you'll see at least SEVEN pterodactyls hiding among the knots and sapwood, depending on how you count them. It's really amazing.

pterodactyl flute, holly on ebony on aromatic cedar.

The side view shows 5 pterodactyls (not counting the fetish) with the larger sapwood image and the little one near the blowhole each having two interpretations.

And 3 pterodactyls can be seen in the top view, including the tiniest one on the flute. A ghostly 'dactyl hangs out on the opposite side. And there's an awesome set of knothole eyes with beak and crest, (approximately 4 inches long) on the back.

To see all the pictures on a single page, click on the image or here.

Kokopelli's First Apache Double Flute

I am proud to have been given the first aromatic cedar double flute that Terry ever made.

This is the Apache style of the carved double flute. It is lovely to look at and beautiful to listen to. The harmonics of the second sound tube just make you want to melt into relaxed oblivion. And, as unusual as this sounds, that flute sound clip is ONE person playing ONE flute, through ONE blowhole; there's been no digital editing... That's what makes the double flute so unique and fun to play!

The black walnut fetish is reversible so that I can play it as a single flute without the harmonic, but I prefer to keep it set as a harmonic double.

This is the only flute he has decorated with woodburning and also the only one with 10 strands of 8-inch leather fringe.

To see all the pictures on a single page, click on the image or here.

He has his own website, so visit to see and hear more of these flutes!

He also teaches flute-making classes at WoodCraft in Addison (Dallas area), and here are two that I made myself in his classes: a Poplar "F" and a Sassafras "G" and they sound TERRIFIC! (If I do say so myself! He's a great teacher!)

I also made a really cool flute out of Tulipwood:

.
Terry used to tell me "Sure, bring in your own wood, and we'll make a flute out of it". After the problems we had with dealing with an "oily tropical," however...well, let's just say I'm not allowed to bring my own wood to class anymore, even if the results were eventually successful. It sounds great and is still holding together after 8 years . Let's just say it was a fantastic example of how NOT to build a flute if you don't know your wood. Take a peek!

(Sorry for the missing pictures, but Kokopelliflutes.com got hijacked 3 years ago, and not all files were backed up. They exist SOMEWHERE among my all my old HDD's, just not in a nice tidy backup folder. I am slowly trying to piece his site back together as a directory here on my site. I was the webdesigner for his site...blame me. :( )

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Updated: April 25, 2000