Those Xaphoon folks are at it again! Check out the new translucent colorec Xaphoons at http://www.xaphoon.com/
Hmmmm… wonder where they get that plastic… 
Oops-- I just went to that website, and it doesn’t have pics of the new instruments (I saw some pics in an e-mail from them this morning).
The new ones are the same design as the plastic version, except they come in translucent Emerald Green, and Ruby Red.
There’s pics on this page…
https://www.xaphoon.com/OrderPage/order_form.html
They look very interesting.
Check out the video of one being made on that link as well. Its quite interesting. He burns the tone holes in with a red hot iron spike. He doesn’t measure or anything. He just knows where they go.
I had to use the dial-up version. The highspeed one didn’t work for me.
Here it is:
I’ve thought about this a bit (having owned a xaphoon and reading the marketing literature), and I don’t think this “knowing just where they go” is as amazing as it seems. With a xaphoon and other open-reeded instrument, there’s a huge amount of variation in pitch that can happen with the amount of pressure you put on the reed. This is quite unlike a whistle, where even though the pitch can be varied with breath control, it’s by a much smaller amount.
So, I think, were he to be to burn the holes close to ideal just by eyeballing it, that would be good enough. Any amount he might have been off can be compensated for at the reed. I don’t think the same would be quite true for a flute or whistle.