Creative work: Taonga pūoro - Pūtōrino

Aromatawai:

Project Brief: Taonga Pūoro - Pūtōrino:

I'm familiar with many taonga pūoro and have made some using uku (clay)  I wanted to learn about a new instrument so I chose a pūtōrino.  I did some rangahau around the story of pūtōrino (Taonga pūoro - Brian Flintoff)  I have based my design around the legend of Hine Raukatauri and the pūrerehua (moth)  I'll attempt the whiriki rua whakarei to adorn the pūtōrinoto to acknowledge the celestial belt.

There will be a small paua inlay at the bottwm of the pūtōrino to represent the beauty of Hine Raukatauri's alluring voice and whare.

Toi Awe (creative process):  Exploration of materials
For my taonga pūoro project, I chose a piece of wood left by my brother-in-law.  I was unsure of what the wood was but when I took it in to class I was told it was Kauri.  I learnt a lot about the challenges of carving kauri.  The main challenge for me was learning to change carving direction so not to rip the wood.  Even though the grain was obvious, I found that in sections of the wood, the grain seemed different, like end grains.  I've always had a great respect for kauri as I have worked on furniture restoration pieces with an uncle many years ago and also the familiarity of visiting Tane Mahuta in Waipoua ngāhere.  Being from the Dargaville area, we are also familiar with the stories of all the kauri logs that were taken along the Wairoa awa by early settlers.

-  Toi Hanga (creating):  An exploration of skills, techniques, processes and methods
-  Toi Raupapa (organisation) Evidence of studio practice, A tauira project brief.
-  Toi Aro (Self-reflection) Evidence of self-reflection,  Resolving and Analysing.
I used my bench saw to start cutting out the pūtōrino and I used my new chisel (Tipene) to shape.  I am s\grateful for the superjaws as I found it easy to get around my work rather that using a vice on my bench.

I had a play around with carving some pine and it was really tricky.  It would often split easily and chip so I had to be super patient when practising whakarei using pine.  I practiced haehae and pākati using the pine block.  After gaining more confidence using the whao, I used the off-cut from the kauri block to practise whakarei (haehae) that was similar to what I wanted to carve onto my toanga pūoro.

Once the shape was sorted, I drew the whakarei onto the pūtōrino and then split it using the band saw at Northtec.  It was tricky to cut but I was grateful for Wilz showing me how to make a jig to stop the pūtōrino from moving.  I noticed that the band saw left cut marks along the split and realised that it will need sanding before joining.  I'm not too sure on how to fix that either.  Do I need to move slower?  Do I need to use a different machine to cut?  I then started hollowing out the centre.  I used a gouge chisel that I bought from George Campbell.  During this process I had to sharpen the chisel.  I took me such a long time to get it right.  An observation I made is that I need a lot more practise sharpening my tools before I get the knack of it.

During the hollowing out process, I would tape the pūtōrino together using electrical tape, to see if it would make a noise.  The first time i taped it up, I couldn't make any sound so I knew that I had to hollow out more of the wood, partly because the trumpet piece was too thick and also the mouth piece on the side opening.  The mouth opening I found tricky to do because i didn't want to snap the half by drilling a hole so I chose a small dremel drill bit to use and slowly made the hole bigger that way rather than use a large drill bit.  It worked but took quite some time to do.

Once I could produce a sound from both openings, I sanded the joins to get rid of the jagged edges that the band saw created.  I flipped my mouse sander upside down and used that, careful not to take too much of the edge off so they wouldn't fit together again.  When I was happy with the join, I applied PVA wood glue to both surfaces and clamped using my super jaws and some padding being very careful not to apply too much pressure.  I left that over night.

The next day I inspected the join.  On reflection I could have possibly spent more time on sanding back the edges a bit more because the join was still obvious.  Now came the MOST challenging part, carving the whakarei.  I practiced again on the off cut, trying to figure out which tool would be best for the job.  Advice from my bro was just 'slow and steady'

A made a number of observations while carving. 

1.  Sometimes going too slow and steady doesn't do a nice clean cut as opposed to being confident and tapping the whakarei with the right amount of force.  I found the slow and steady cuts needed tidying up afterwards.

2.  Keep an eye (and ear) out for the change in the grain.  I could hear splitting while doing the whiriki lines and knew instantly that I had to change direction of my chisel line.  Sometimes I didn't listen carefully enough and small bits chipped off.

3.  Your whao needs to be sharp!  I used the factory sharp 13/4 whao thinking the smaller the chisel the better because its only a small piece... WRONG once I used my fav chisel 'Hori" which is a sharp haehae chisel and moves through the wood nicely, it really tidied up my cuts and its obvious on the completed piece which whao I used on each half.

After nervously completing the whakarei I thought about what thread to use to bind the pūtōrino.  I gave the pūtōrino a good coat of danish oil and then rubbed all the excess oil off because I read somewhere that the oil helps harden the wood.  I had some black thread and wrapped some around to have a look... 

I instantly thought the thread was too thick for the piece and then tried wax string.  I also thought the wax string would create a tighter binding.  I had to watch a you tube video to figure out how to bind tidily.  It actually took way longer (and quite a few attempts) to get it right.

Final reflection:  When working in my workshop at home I felt it super important to always start with karakia.  One practise I need to also include is to finish with karakia.  I found because I would always go back to my workshop throughout the day I never really thought about "Am I coming back in here later?" so there wasn't any 'finish' time set.  

I absolutely enjoyed this project and felt proud of what I had achieved.  Like anything else we do, skill comes with practise and I have to learn to tackle the whakarei with confidence, the same way I do everything else (tools, shaping etc).  I look forward to the next task and I'm also keen on getting acquainted with 'other' rākau.    

Things I'd do differently next time: 

*  Figure out how to have a cleaner cut when cutting piece in half) 

*  I would spend more time on the joins - thinking about our tupuna who wouldn;t have used PVA glue to join, they would have made the join as seamless as possible so no air could escape, even with the binding there would have to be no gaps at all.

*  Sharpen all the chisels,

*  Keep practising whakarei

*  Use some smaller g/f-clamps when joining rather that clamping just the middle using the superjaw.  

*  Possibly look at different stains to highlight the beauty of the rakau..