Just for fun, I thought I’d chime in on this, though I don’t know how relevant my contribution will be. It ended up being a bit prolix, so apologies to all 
. I hope it is not too far off topic, being a bit philosophical.
I don’t make keys or keyed flutes, though I seriously considered it at one point. In fact, I rarely make “Irish flutes” any longer, and this ties into some points that paddler made earlier in the thread.
I make all types of keyless folk flutes of various levels of sophistication. I spent serious time (years on end) perfecting my own line of Irish flutes (aka conical bore wooden flutes) as well as a line of Boehm head joints for silver flutes. In the process of doing this I got to do a lot of experimentation with all the different ways that a maker can work to both enhance their efficiency and increase quality and consistency (and as paddler points out, consistency is one of the most difficult things to achieve and takes a lot of practice and dedication).
So I got really very skilled at making good quality conical bore flutes very efficiently, but I ended up stopping. Why? Because it was simply not as profitable as making many of the other flutes in my catalog. It didn’t make sense for me to put the time in on these flutes when my time could be more profitably spent on other types of flutes. This realization underlines another point that was made earlier in the thread, and that is that many of the better makers working in the ITM market are doing it more for love than for money, so they are willing to make themselves more accessible to that market.
When someone like Dave Copley can offer a high quality keyless flute for around 1K, that is remarkable to me. And as I say, I got really efficient at making the equivalent instrument. I did the math (based upon what I expected to be paid for my time) and determined for the exact same flute I would charge at least 2K (and this is not because I’m slow, and certainly not because I can make it better than Dave). Needless to say, most players would run screaming at that price point! That’s because they can already get something like a Copley, an Olwell, or any number of other excellent flutes for less, and that is possible because those makers are already making their flutes as affordable as they feel they can. No one gets into flute making because they aspire to wealth.
I recently read Jem Hammond’s review of a line of Pakistani made flutes, and it underlined many of the problems of inexpensive, mass-produced instruments. Mass production is something that can yield a wide range of results, from really good to total junk, depending upon scale and investment. One of the reason that mass-produced key work can be done well by manufacturers of Boehm flutes, or clarinets and the like is because these manufacturers are typically making a ton of them, with a huge up-front investment. They can do this because the size of their market justifies it. I’m pretty much just restating what paddler already said on this subject. But I’ve contracted with a machinist in the past to mass-manufacture some parts for me (these were various metal gizmos that I was using for my Boehm head joints), and I can attest that this can be very costly. The design, the set-up and execution is quite involved. If a maker is going to do something like mass-produced keys, the point of the exercise would be to save themselves physical labor and ideally make their flutes more affordable, and for that to work there has to be some bulk buying involved. The smaller the batch, the higher the cost. For a solo maker that can be a pretty huge speculation, so I doubt if very many make the attempt.
In any case, the market would have to be large enough to justify this, and I don’t think the ITM market is or ever will be that big. I don’t know what the population of ITM flute players is, but compared to players of orchestral instruments (Boehm flute, clarinet, etc.) it is tiny. Boehm flute players…they are everywhere. I heard from a Japanese flute tech (who has been involved Japan’s equivalent of the National Flute Association) that there are something like a million Boehm flute players in Japan alone. That’s just Japan. 
This is a market that justifies mass-production.
Anyway, coming back around to the subject of key-making, I looked into a bit and got a sense of what was involved and I ran screaming! 
. It is insanely skilled work—virtually another entire discipline—and it is absolutely a love-over-money type of endeavor. When I see makers selling a six keyed flute for 3-4K (or less) I’m staggered. That seems soooo inexpensive to me given the labor and skill involved. I’d charge you 10K at least . And this is not because I’m some greedy maker who covets money (again, wrong choice of profession), but simply because I’m a craftsman who has a sense of the skill and labor involved in executing that type of work. And because I’m not deeply immersed in ITM I’m coming from a different perspective, which is practicality over love (though I do enjoy making conical bore flutes).
My impression of the Pakistani manufacturers is that they are in this solely as a practical, money-making endeavor, utilizing cheap labor and shoddy methods full of short cuts to increase profit. If they mass produce something like keys, my guess is that their mass production is full of similar shortcuts that will translate to inferior quality. In short, they don’t “love” what they are doing, any more than someone manufacturing widgets loves that. It’s just a job. And even if they get close to making a serviceable flute, they are still a long, long way from making a really top quality instrument. And as paddler mentioned, it takes a lot of effort and commitment to push that final 1% to hit the quality ceiling of what is possible with these flutes. Almost all of the skill and labor is focused on that final 1%, and the only makers who are going to do that are highly motivated, either by a deep love of the craft and/or an innate sense of perfectionism that transcends an interest in profit.
I have a Patrick Olwell keyless flute here (on extended loan from a customer of mine) and I’m routinely amazed by how friggin’ good it is. I’ve crawled though that thing with a flashlight, t-gauges, micrometers, etc. and made a study of its physical structure and design, but I still can’t measure what it is that gives it that extra bit of mojo. I think it is all down to attention to very tiny details, so nuanced as to defy measurement. That’s what someone is paying for—that tiny, nearly invisible final 1% (or less) that takes it to the next level, and that is very fussy work.
I watched a video of Patrick Von Huene doing the finish work on voicing a recorder. These recorders have many aspects of their production done on a (relatively) mass scale, though not like you’d see at someplace like Yamaha. And even that aspect of manufacture takes a lot of skill and attention to detail. But once the recorder is nearly complete, he sits down and does the critical finishing touches, and I loved watching that. This guy is insanely skilled at what he does and you can tell how much love and attention goes into the final product. I expect his stuff is going to cost more than factory produced instruments, but my guess is that it is well worth the extra cost (and looking through his catalog, I think his work is priced very modestly).
All this to say that I think a lot of the time, the end user of a fine instrument doesn’t necessarily have a good grasp of what is involved in making them. I’ve known talented players who have a lot of skill but haven’t really surveyed and compared the better quality instruments, contenting themselves with something a bit more middle of the road. They haven’t been able to really do a deep dive and contrast the best flutes to those that are just solidly “good”. They see the price difference and they balk at the cost of the higher end flutes, and they don’t see the sense of it. They say, “My $400 Irish flute does just fine, why would I pay $1800 for the same thing?”. Well, of course they are not the same thing, but they won’t know that until they have enough experience and exposure to various instruments to actually make an accurate judgement.
Pakistani flutes must sell better than I thought.
