I am going to order a chanter in C and I heard boxwood sound good for flat chanters. But I,m a bit conserned as I also heard that boxwood in prone to bend even after a long time. Would I be better to stick with ebony
Kevin
If it were me, I 'd go for the ebony or one of the rosewood’s, 
I have seen to many warped & split boxwood chanters. 
spend your hard earned money wisely. all the best.
I have a boxwood flute over 200 years old that’s completely unwarped and plays great. Boxwood has a great sound in my opinion (and many will challenge the idea that wood has anything to do with timbre in UP) so you shouldn’t discount it. If, however, you’re going to be doing a lot of traveling with in between wide variations of humidity/temperature, you’ll want to go with a different wood. One of the rosewoods is what you should consider if that’s the route you’re going to take.
Boxwood and ebony… totally different sounds.
I’ve never encountered a cracked boxwood chanter, except key blocks, and if anything ebony is more prone to cracking - it’s certainly more brittle.
Boxwood does often warp significantly, but not always - if the thought of warping bothers you, perhaps another timber would be better. However the warping doesn’t seem to affect the playing properties. I am not sure its warping/movement is particularly a problem with humidity swings, at least within the range encountered in pipes. Consider that boxwood flutes regularly survive wetting from inside while being played, followed by drying cycles…
Best regards,
Bill
I also have a boxwood flute that is over two hundred years old, but it DOES have a warp to it. As Bill says, it doesn’t seem to effect the tone or tuning at all. According to Dave SHorey, who once worked with the Dayton Miller Collection at the Smithsonian, anytime he wanted to move a flute in a case he simply left it overnight and it ‘walked’ its way into position, by warping/unwarping/warping/unwarping. It is a trait of boxwood.
Ebony, on the otherhand has more sever problems with shrinkage. As mentioned is is quite brittle and is far more inclined to crack. I have a Thin Weasel whistle from Glenn Shultz that cracked at just about every place it touched metal. Needless to say he stopped working with ebonybecause the stuff was so fussy.
Robert Mouland
www.wireharp.com
I play a boxwood chanter and I prefer the sound. It is warped but in my opinion still sounds great. However, if warping concerns you, get your maker to microwave it, I’ve done this several times with perfect results.
My old Cillian Ó Bríain chanter was pretty darned warped (see photo in the “pictures of your pipes” thread–Maurice Reviol nicknamed it “the banana”) but it plays fantastically.
If getting a boxwood set/chanter, do see if the maker “microwaves” the wood (there’s a good description of this process on Hamish Moore’s website) and make sure that they allow the boxwood ample time to rest between working it.
My new Galloway is perfectly straight so far (touch wood), but I would advise anyone playing boxwood instruments to try and keep them out of extreme changes in humidity just in case…
It’s really six of one and half a dozen of the other, ultimately. Whatever wood you wind up choosing, what’s most important is that the maker knows how to make a good reed!
Aha. Here’s the bit about microwaving boxwood.
I have Dunne made boxw. -chanter about 3years now. no warpin/ bending at all. Sounds great.
This way… 
forgot to mention that this above pic has nothing to do with Dunne chanter,
whole fullset is from other maker…but box we trust even it’s abit bendy
You would be in trouble if the regulators started to bend .I like the boxwood ,the mounts look strange and the keys are a bit all over the place. I seen some of rogge,s other pipes and there very nice
Kevin
troubles…so whatkinda… 
How do the keys look “all over the place”? They look like normal chanter and regulator keys to me…
Boxwood is probably fine for most typical designs of regulators. Provided the wood has been properly treated and left to age for a good long time, any bending that takes place after receiving the instrument SHOULD be very slight and more or less imperceptible to the naked eye…There are, of course, exceptions to the rule. I’ve seen a couple of very old boxwood sets with kinda bent regulators and they still worked alright.
I would not, however, get boxwood regulators that have been encased in metal (i.e., “Taylor-style” regulators) as that might not be a good idea in the long-term. When Cillian switched over to making his “neo-Taylor-style” regs, he turned out a few all-boxwood sets before deciding that it wasn’t the best of ideas and switching to just making the wood components of the regs in blackwood or holly.
I did not mean the regs in the picture are bent ,just that you would be in trouble if any regs bent. The wood in the regs in the picture looks straight.
there looks like there is a knot in the wood of the small reg at the end .I would not think wood with knots would make good pipes. I have heard just because you buy pipes from Mr Rogge does not mean he made them.
Kevin
He employs some others who turn wood and metal, make keys, tools etc. - Reeds are made solely by Andreas. The waiting list would be some decades long if he made everything himself I guess, and I don’t see any problems with working in that way.
whatkinda trouble
Boxwood is really quite different from other timbers. As is suggested in another current thread, it really does have its own special tonal qualities. It was the European timber of choice for musical instruments and precision instruments for centuries.
I love working with boxwood, but it tends to yield lots of surprises: warping, knots, pitch pockets, bluestain, are just some of the challenges. But it has a visual beauty of its own which isn’t quite matched by the various “faux” boxwoods, and the substitutes are not that similar tonally - at least in my experience.
Boxwood can and usually does have grain patterns that result in dark patches without necessarily forming “knots” in the sense that may be familiar from other woods; boxwood is very tough, so even fissures and cracks that occur within these knots tend not to grow over time, once the wood is fully seasoned, and these imperfections are often very shallow and/or localized. If such an imperfection is visible on the outside of a chanter, regulator, or drone, it often won’t extend into the bore section; on the other hand, there may be imperfections in the bore section that are not visible from the outside, so one must look critically at the bore. Pitch pockets are more of a worry, especially if they extend into the bore, but if not, they can be visually interesting and any voids that may be present can be filled with solid shellac. So in this respect, too, boxwood is different from other woods. One of these knot-like grain patterns is present at the end of the tenor regulator in the photo above; in such a relatively harmless place, it can be used to advantage, and when working with boxwood one often plans pieces so that these grain figures are displayed to advantage while being placed “out of harm’s way”, structurally and acoustically.
In practice, warping is not usually a functional problem (unlike, for instance, ovalling of drone slides). The socket of slides is one place where you don’t want warping. Warping elsewhere is usually harmless, as is evidenced by the many historic boxwood sets in good condition. There’s a Kenna set (unfortunately I don’t have permission to post photos) whose regulators are so bent that they actually cross at the ends, but the keys still work fine. (The baritone regulator in the photo posted by uilleannfinlander is in fact warped, but only a few mm; neither the key action nor the layout of the keys is adversely affected. BTW Kevin, it is not a Rogge set as you seem to believe - it has been discussed in another thread).
If the boxwood is well seasoned at the outset, my experience is that most warping happens pretty much immediately, as the piece is turned. This is a good reason to turn some boxwood pieces in slow stages where practical. The bending in these cases seems to be the result of internal stresses in the wood whose balance changes as wood is taken away. A prime example is when removing wood between key blocks - this is exactly when most boxwood warping takes place, and of course by this time the bore has already been completed. Avoiding the problem by working in slow stages doesn’t seem practical for regulators, because the worst of the warping doesn’t take place until the last stages of turning.
Boxwood isn’t for everybody, because of these various faults (most of which are cosmetic). It would be possible in theory to make a boxwood set that was devoid of these cosmetic blemishes and virtually free from warping, but it would be prohibitively expensive since so much wood would have to be rejected (even if one purchases the best available grade of boxwood), much of it after already being partly finished.
I have heard, over the years, much contradictory information about various treatments for boxwood which purport to reduce the tendancy to warp, including the microwave suggestions. So far I am wary of microwaving any kind of timber, or anything that proposes to violently rupture the wood’s cellular structure. Of course if it works for Hamish, it may be worth a try.
Another well-known boxwood set is played by Padraig MacMathuna; it’s quite warped, including the chanter, but it plays just fine.
Best regards,
Bill
If I had a bit more money to spare I would go for the boxwood chanter and if it did bend I could get another one ,but I can only afford one chanter at the moment so I will go for a ebony one.
I had a feeling it was not a rogge pipes my guess it was made by one of his workers. If I was going to buy pipes from rogge I,d want them to be made by him.
Kevin