Given the cost of blackwood, what’s a good practice wood to learn the basics of boring, turning, and reaming? What wood did you start with?
I’m still saving up for a lathe. In the meantime, I’m trying to learn as much as I can.
Thank you
It depends on what kind of wood is available to you. In my region, the most accessible wood for practice is beech and you can learn to work with hardwood on this material. Once you’ve got the hang of it, you can move on to maple — that wood is suitable for wind instruments.
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I would second the suggestion for maple–one of my favorite all-around flute making woods. Super versatile. In the U.S. you can easily get kiln-dried maple that is very affordable and stable/ready-to-work.
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Thanks for the suggestions @Marat and @Geoffrey_Ellis. I live in the Philippines, but we have suppliers that import Maple and Beech and I think there may be some local equivalents.
We also have a lot of Mahogany. I wonder if that would work for flute making?
It will definitely work. There is variation among woods that are called mahogany, and a lot of them are not true mahogany. But many of them are similar enough that they can make good flutes. I use a lot of Sapele, which is a very nice flute wood, even though it is not genuine mahogany. Here is a nice overview of the various types:
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We have a lot of Honduran Mahogany (Swietenia Macrophylla) here, one of the “true” mahoganies mentioned the article you referenced. It’s actually controversial because it’s an invasive species that tends to kill other native trees and plants in its vicinity due to its allelopathic leaves.
That seems like an excellent, guilt-free excuse for using it to make flutes!
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Geoffrey, I’m curious if you have tried out any ‘torrefied’ maple? It’s become quite popular lately in the guitar world.
Indeed I have–I use it regularly. I’ve taken to doing my own roasting, however, because commercially roasted maple has a significant upcharge. The downside to roasting my own is that I can only roast a piece that is 30” or less (given the dimensions of the oven I’m using). But it’s quite simple as a DIY thing. Apart from being handsome in itself its advantage with woodwinds is that it is quite stable as a result—not unlike resin stabilized wood, only without the added density.
Geoffrey kindly shared a billet of torrefied curly maple with me, and I subjected it to vacuum resin infusion to increase its density and stabilize it yet further. I recently finished making a keyless Pratten from it, with phosphor bronze rings. It plays very well and has quite a dramatic look too. See picture below.
I found the torrefied maple to be a bit more fragile than untreated maple. The vacuum resin infusion process seems to improve this as well as adding density. In general, I’d say that most fruit woods are a bit better for making our kinds of flutes than maple is. In the US and Europe that would be species such as plum, pear, cherry etc, and other similar woods such as hawthorn, dogwood, etc. These are nice because they have a very fine grain structure and polish to a mirror finish. When you subject these woods to vacuum resin infusion, they end up having a density as high or higher than boxwood, a similar ability to hold fine detail, but dramatically better stability.
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And the darker the roast, the more fragile it becomes. I do a pretty light roast on my own maple for this reason. Maple is a strong wood, but if you really roast it quite a lot of that strength is diminished. That flute looks amazing! It makes me want to do some more resin-infusion on the roasted stuff….
What temperature do you roast your maple? I am used to baking spoons that I carve, at 400f/200c, but baking the finished product is different from roasting a billet … and I guess it takes a bit longer too!
I roast it at 350F for around 4-5 hours for a light to medium roast. I’m sure there is variation in result based upon individual ovens as well as the wood itself.
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Thanks! That’s a lot longer than my spoons!
Ah - a possible new use for an air fryer.
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Indeed! I have one of these in my workshop for heat curing the vacuum resin infused billets. It works well because it has an air circulation mode that minimizes the localized hot and cool areas inside the oven. It also has a nice long timer that can go up to 12 hours.
Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro
For heat curing resin after vacuum infusion I cook the billets for 8 hours at 200 F. They probably don’t need that long, but you really need to make sure the billets are thoroughly cooked all the way through.
One challenge with using these kinds of ovens is that you are limited in terms of the length of billet you can cook. The one listed above is one of the larger ones available, and can do billets up to about 18 inches if you place them diagonally.
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