Maple flutes

[jim stone]

I just picked up a maple sweetheart D flute.
Maple sounds very good indeed in these flutes
and I wonder if anybody has explored
making highend flutes out of maple,
by which I mean, with a tuning slide, etc.
I know it's used in some excellent
guitars (back and sides).

Why not maple? Instead of mopane.
As a competitor to blackwood, etc.

[glauber]

Why not maple? Instead of mopane.
As a competitor to blackwood, etc.

I dunno; it seems a porous and wimpy wood to me. But i do have a Sweetheart D piccolo in maple, and it's not a bad flute.

The wood that i really like is olivewood. They make recorders out of it, and they look (and smell) great. I'd love to see an olivewood flute.

g

[AaronMalcomb]

I played in a pipe band in which we used maple chanters and they sounded great-- big, bright sound. The blond color would make a nice looking flute.
Maybe a woodturner would know more if there are difficulties in turning maple or if there are inherent weaknesses.
Tonally those chanters held their own for over 20 years with only minor carving and tweaking (something we often to GHB chanters).
Cheers,
Aaron

[Jayhawk]

Ralph gives his maple instruments (and perhaps other woods, too) a bath in Tung oil which seals the wood. I wonder if that seal stays with age or not?

Eric

[glauber]

Ralph gives his maple instruments (and perhaps other woods, too) a bath in Tung oil which seals the wood. I wonder if that seal stays with age or not?

It's permanent. He uses high temperature and pressure to force the oil into the wood. Then the oil dries in place and stays there. This is a technique used often with recorders made of lighter wood. It probably doesn't work at all with denser woods such as blackwood (you wouldn't be able to force enough (or any) oil in).

Eldred Spell is a high-end piccolo headjoint maker who uses the same process on "mountain mahogamy" for his 'joints.

g

[WistleEnvy]

The wood that i really like is olivewood. They make recorders out of it, and they look (and smell) great. I'd love to see an olivewood flute.

Check out http://kendaco.telebyte.com/cburns/Hutchins.jpg this is from Case Burns website http://kendaco.telebyte.com/cburns/flutecat.html .

That is indeed one beautiful looking flute.

I can almost smell it.

Colin

[glauber]

The wood that i really like is olivewood. They make recorders out of it, and they look (and smell) great. I'd love to see an olivewood flute.

Check out http://kendaco.telebyte.com/cburns/Hutchins.jpg this is from Case Burns website http://kendaco.telebyte.com/cburns/flutecat.html .

That is indeed one beautiful looking flute.

I can almost smell it.

Yum! He seems to have stained it, so it looks even prettier.

g

[mrosenlof]

Maple is used for recorder fairly often, as well as sycamore, which I've heard described as similar characteristics. The maple recorder (Moeck, oops, maybe it's sycamore) I have does have some sort of wax-pressure treatment that's supposed to seal it very effectively.

[ErikT]

I make (or am making to make) flutes from maple that has been stabilized by an acrylic resin. This probably does the same thing as the wax or oil impregnation. It yields a dimensionally stable instrument but I can only assume that it changes the tone/timbre from what a 'pure' hunk of maple would sound like. That's not necessarily bad as it yields a nice round tone.

I use curly maple and it adds some really neat figure to a round flute. I think that it's a beautiful material to work with.

Erik

[peeplj]

I have a maple Baroque flute by Sweet which I enjoy playing from time to time, although it's not a session flute.

That said, I would think maple would be too soft to make a keyed flute from. The blocks on the one key on the Baroque show significant wear even though this flute has only been played occasionally.

Best,

--James

[jim stone]

My untutored and subjective impression
is that maple is very hard, very sturdy, and not
pourous. Maybe the problem on
the block of the baroque flute,
and it's shortcoming as a session
flute, flow from a cause other
than that the flute is maple?

My first experience with it
was guitars. It's used
on big Gibson (and Taylor) jumbo
guitars, of the sort Rev. Gary Davis
played. Blues and gospel. Its lends a big
sound to these guitars. Back and sides.
I think that's partly because of its
hardness.

I've played flutes and recorders made
of maple. They seem to have considerable
volume and clarity--the sweetheart maple
D has an impressive sound. My experience
is that maple recorders are tough and durable,
I actually got a used Moeck in Katmandu,
bummed around India with it, and kept it
for another fifteen years
under bad conditions (including a stint
in Thailand) before I somehow lost it.
It was never the worse for wear and gee
it sounded good.

Well, one wonders what happens if
a good flute maker makes a flute
of maple, with a tuning slide, cork
tenons, etc. It would probably soundbetter than the Sweetheart I have,
which would make it very good
indeed.

I guess we need to hear from somebody
who makes wood flutes, as mentioned
earlier in this thread, but the idea is tantalizing that
maybe here is an inexpensive environmentally
safe wood that is superiour for flutes, competing
with more expensive and less available
wood. Maybe it's a matter of
tradition that we haven't used it? Best

[AaronMalcomb]

Would the drool dripping from the end of a maple flute be more syrupy?

Just curious.

Cheers,
Aaron

[Gordon]

Maple is a softer wood and pretty much needs to be impregnated with waxes and oils in order to behave like an exotic hardwood. It works better on guitars without this because there is no moisture involved. Moeck impregnates its maple and sycamore (they're related species, I believe) recorders with wax and it works fairly well, but keep in mind these are lower-priced instruments. Recorders, like flutes, use blackwood and boxwood, etc., on their upper instruments for all the reasons we already know.
Gordon

[peeplj]

Would the drool dripping from the end of a maple flute be more syrupy?

Just curious.

Cheers,
Aaron

You did remind me of something, though.

When I play the maple Baroque flute, very little condensate forms in the bore, whereas on my other flutes I usually have water dripping out of the end after having played an hour or so.

I think this is perhaps because I don't use as much air, or driven as hard, as when I play my other flutes, but I also wonder if the maple absorbs much more water than does blackwood. (Polymer and silver, of course, don't absorb at all.)

Actually, I think I like the maple syrup idea best of all!

--James

[Gordon]

When I play the maple Baroque flute, very little condensate forms in the bore, whereas on my other flutes I usually have water dripping out of the end after having played an hour or so.

I think this is perhaps because I don't use as much air, or driven as hard, as when I play my other flutes, but I also wonder if the maple absorbs much more water than does blackwood. (Polymer and silver, of course, don't absorb at all.)

Actually, I think I like the maple syrup idea best of all!

--James[/quote]

Condensation in a bore has little to do with the "amount" of air you use to make sound. The lesser amount of air used to produce sound on a baroque is still quite enough to fill the smaller bore, which is enough to produce sound. That lesser amount of moist air has the same water molecules per square inch as when you blow into any flute, which means that, even though you blow less hard on a baroque, you will still produce the same amount of condensation. Spit, of course, is a different phenomena, and really shouldn't occur in any great quantity in a flute, anyway. My plastic Aulos baroque drips far more than my blackwood Pratten, in spite of the amount of air the latter needs to play at full tilt.
Which is a long-winded (same moisture content) way of saying that your maple flute is, in fact, absorbing more moisture than your blackwood flute.
Gordon