[Yuri]

Hi there. As my net name implies, my name is Yuri. Of Russian origin. I do all sort of small carving, and also musical instruments, too. The photos below are the kind whare I combine the two. It's an ocarina, made from ostrich bone. Fully functional, too. (Even tuned well, which is a sort of optional extra with far too many ocarinas...)
The face around the window is just pencilled in. That happened about 2 years ago, and I still haven't got around to carving it. Takes maybe half an hour, too. Just goes to show.

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[Velin]

Yuri, on Jul 4 2009, 06:49 AM, said:

Hi there. As my net name implies, my name is Yuri. Of Russian origin. I do all sort of small carving, and also musical instruments, too. The photos below are the kind whare I combine the two. It's an ocarina, made from ostrich bone. Fully functional, too. (Even tuned well, which is a sort of optional extra with far too many ocarinas...)
The face around the window is just pencilled in. That happened about 2 years ago, and I still haven't got around to carving it. Takes maybe half an hour, too. Just goes to show.

Hi. nice to see carvings on something usual and producing music.
The ostrich bone is from leg or ...?

[Yuri]

It's from the leg. The long bone, I don't really know the latin name in birds. It's long enough to make about 5 or 6 ocarinas of this size. They are farmed here, in NZ, and I live not very far from the one freezing work on the South Island that processes them.

[Don Barnhill]

Nice work. Thanks for sharing the photo's.

[Phil White]

Welcome, Yuri

Lovely work, good to see you here.

Phil

[Jim Kelso]

Welcome Yuri. Beautiful carving. Too bad we can't hear it.
Nice to see so many Kiwis here.

Jim

[Novice Carver]

Sweet Ocarina Yuri,

I have a Koauau (Maori flute) a friend made and I am interested in trying to make a bone flute or incorporate bone into a flute. Do you make any other instruments?

[Novice Carver]

Scratch that last question, I just checked out your site. My wife and I just returned to Canada from New Zealand a few days ago, (that's where I started carving) wish I could have visited your shop. I have played the great highland bagpipes for many years now and also have a small set of kitchen pipes. The pieces you have made with the native timber look amazing. There is so much I want to learn from the skilled people on this site. I'm just going to check out some of the sound from your different pipes, really excited to see and hear your work, glad to meet you on the path.

[Yuri]

Hi guys and gals.
Thank you for the nice comments.
Novice carver, I have to admit I don't actually have a shop. I basically fill orders as they come (not enough) and just carve around and experiment with all sort of weird musical instruments when no orders are forthcoming. (Far too big slice of my time). Practically all my sales are going overseas. And all I have is a scruffy workshop; when I look at Janel's incredibly tidy and neat workshop I feel like a total loser. Ah, well, I managed for many years, so it's too late for an old dog to learn new tricks.
For those interested, there are sound clips on my website, incidentally. Not just the ocarinas, but all sorts. For that matter, on another page are the bonecarvings (with a koauau, too), and on yet another are my puppets. (which I love to make, and yet make far too few.)

[Janel]

Hello Yuri,

Welcome to The Carving Path forum! I apologize for my tardiness, but I have just returned from a week long stint away from my computer.

Are the ostrich bones as hard as beef bones (as a point of reference)? What is the average diameter of the bones?

Janel

[Yuri]

Hi Janel.
It's a great forum, by the way.
The ostrich bones are rather more variable than beef. Both in size, wall thickness and within the bone itself. As a rough idea, they tend to be quite tapered, with (in the useable part) the thicker end about 1 1/2" x 1 1/4" or so , at the thinnest part about 1 1/4"x 1", and then flaring out again a bit. That's for an adult bird. Younger birds are a bit smaller, but also they tend to have a different profile in cross-cut. The useable lenght of an adult bird is about 2 feet. (that's ~40mmx32mm, 32mmx 26mm, and about 300mm) But as I said, there is far more variation between birds. The bone itself is more porous than beef, but again, it depends on the actual bird. The porousness is not really an issue, though. It's not that bad. Another thing is that there is considerable variation in the colour of the bone within one bone, but like all bones it works well with peroxide bleaching.
Cheers.

[Billy]

Hi Yuri. Great to see more Kiwis here. Nice work.

Billy