Maple flutes

Irish Flute
21

Several people have mentioned that maple is soft. The thing to realize is that there are several kinds of maple. In general, you can buy soft maple or hard maple. Last time I was shopping for hardwoods, they were kept in distinctly separate areas so there would be no confusion. Hard maple is often used for pinblocks on hammered dulcimers or psalteries. Very strong, very stable. Soft maple won’t hold up like that.

Just to keep thinks confused.

Personally, maple wins in my eyes for the prettiest wood in the world. i have worked with a lot of different and dramatic woods, but the understated beauty of an oil-finished figured maple just can’t be beat by anything else I have seen so far.

-Patrick

22

Patrick reminded me of a couple of points. Not that he’s confusing things, but:

  1. Hardwood does NOT mean the wood is hard. Hardwoods are broad-leafed trees. It’s taxonomic based on the way the tree grows and the type of leaves, not the timber. There are some REALLY soft hardwoods out there.

  2. Pinblocks on dulcimers/psalteries is a different story, in my opinion. Taking a bore polish, and then being able to keep that polish under the moist conditions of a mouthblown instrument is much more difficult than being a pinblock, I’d bet. Not that I’ve talked to a lot of pinblocks . . . but they’re in much more stable conditions than a flute.

How did we get started on this, anyway? I can’t even remember.

Stuart

23

I don’t remember how we got onto this, either, Stuart, but I agree with you. The fact that maple (including the spectacularly beautiful curly maple) needs so much impregnating speaks to its inherent inability to defy moisture; without the oils and wax, it is like a sponge. Again, this is fine on guitars and even pipes, which are not exposed to constant moisture. Maybe the hard/soft issue is misleading, since these are all hardwoods.
And Jim, I’m not sure why you think of maple as bright and loud; it’s really not. If the maple instruments you are familiar with were, it more probably had to do with the way the instrument was made – and impregnated with hardening wax/oils. Had the same instrument been made from blackwood or – heaven forbid – plastic, it would most probably have been that much brighter. Boxwood, well, it would just sound better.
Gordon

24

Well, the reason I think maple has a big, bright sound
is that I’ve played lots of maple recorders that did;
also I’ve played maple flutes that did, one of which
I just bought for that reason. I’ve never played
a maple woodwind that didn’t. Aaron above says
that maple pipes have a big, bright sound, too.
This suggests that the sound isn’t an artifact
of how the instruments are made.

I take the point that the sound may be the
result of the maple being impregnated
with whatever, but I doubt this about the
Sweetheart flutes, because one supposes it
would up the price and Sweetheart maple
flutes and whistles are priced just the same as walnut
and apple. Still I don’t know, one way or the other.

I’ll write to Sweetheart and report what they
say.

In any case, if what I’m hearing isn’t maple,
but impregnated maple, then I would be
interested in hearing a very well made flute made of
impregnated maple. If I had to bet it would
be that blackwood sounds better, but
I’m still interested. I’m less inclined to
bet that mopane sounds better. Best to all

25

Well, I think it’s up to your ears, then, Jim, and what you like.

I know that one selling point, even with recorders, is that maple is mellow. I’ve heard from woodworkers/turners that it’s MUCH softer to work on than, say, blackwood.

I know this comes down to an opinion thing, so there IS no right or wrong, but I have to disagree that the maple is what was making those recorders and the flute loud and bright. Bore design plays a HUGE part in it. I have a pair of whistles, same maker, close serial numbers, one from pink ivory (which is closer to blackwood hardness) and one from delrin. Very different sound. I’ve also played the same pairing of recorders, and the maple sound was downright softer.

I actually think, from the stuff I’ve heard, that the groupings would fall out along the lines of {maple}, {boxwood}, {blackwood, cocus}.

And I really don’t think unimpregnated maple would be worth the trouble. Impregnated maple . . . well, if it’s something beautiful like curly maple, sure! But regular maple . . . olivewood is much prettier. :wink:

Stuart

26

Sweetheart folk flutes are of the same design–maple sounds
brighter, clearer and louder than the other woods they
use, except rosewood, which I haven’t tried.
Again this suggests that maple has a bright, loud sound.
Then count the maple bagpipes with a bright,
loud sound… But of course I haven’t heard these flutes
in cocus or blackwood.

Well you know the
story of the fellow who drank scotch on the
rocks, vodka on the rocks, bourbon on
the rocks, get howling drunk in each
case, and so cut out the rocks.
So pehraps the jokes on me. Best

27

Well, Jim, the thing about most Sweethearts is that they are generally made of even softer woods than maple – apple and other fruit woods. So, yeah, rosewood is their costliest wood, and the most naturally hardest/moisture resistant. A permeated maple would be next in line, and sound loud and bright compared to fruit woods. There are reasons Ralph can keep his costs down, and that’s certainly one of them.
Gordon

28

Yeah, that’s an excellent point. I don’t know the Sweetheart flute line, but if we’re talking maple vs. apple or pear, for example, then yes, reltively speaking the maple is hard. But it’s a lot softer than any of the other stuff we usually talk about (like box/cocus/blackwood).

I also get the distinct impression that there’s not necessarily the consistency with SH flutes that there might be with flutes made by other makers.

What pipes have you seen out of maple? I guess I’ve seen inexpensive uilleann drones in maple, and some medieval reproductions in maple/sycamore, but never a maple chanter or a maple set of highland pipes. I guess I’ve seen Swedish pipes that might have been birch or maple or somesuch.

Stuart

29

Bore dimension was mentioned as being an important factor to colour of tone and such. Bore is probably the crucial element to be looked at regarding tone. It would be nice if there was a flutemaker on here to resolve this.

Back to Highland pipes (and if anybody feels my referencing GHB so often is inappropriate or tiresome let me know): Bore is crucial to tone in GHB drones. Blackwood is the predominant wood (nearly 99%) and different bagpipes have different tonal qualities yet they are all made of blackwood (some vintage sets are proper cocuswood). It all comes down to bore dimensions. Some pipers go after a mellow drone sound, others a big and bright sound.

So the only real answer to whether maple is a reliable, alternative wood to blackwood, cocus, and boxwood for Irish flute is bore dimension. Flutes of identical dimension but different wood using chromography to measure the difference will tell us.

Cheers,
Aaron

30

I personally have played a maple chanter made by Sinclair in the Lyon College Pipe Band (2nd place, 2001 World Pipe Band Championships, grade 3b). Below is a picture of the set I mentioned in a previous post. They were made by Jack Dunbar of St. Catherines, ON. They were played in the Ontario grade 1 band circuit (probably the most competitive circuit in North America).

Cheers,
Aaron

31

This just arrived from the exceedingly
helpful Ralph Sweet. I reckon that he
won’t mind my copying it here.


Dear Jim: Yes! The maple (also all my flutes) are soaked in tung oil sealer for 2 hours, let dry, then repeated the next day. Then two coats of the finish tung oil. This is necessary because all the North American hardwoods are porous, too much so to make a good instrument. The German recorder makers do impregate them with paraffin wax, with a vacuum process. Then if you leave it in the car on a hot day, the wax comes out, making a mess! But the tung oil kind of hardens (polymerizes) something like linseed oil, or paint and the instrument come out completely airtight. That’s why you don’t have to worry constantly about oiling them - - Thanks, Ralph Sweet, Sweetheart Flute Co.

32

Well, I’ll be.

OK, Aaron, um, yeah. I, well, heh, guess I didn’t remember the Sinclair maple chanters. I played one of those back in . . . hmm . . . about 1986? I didn’t remember they were maple, but they were blond timber. So I was just wrong with that. Heck, I was a teenager in the 80s.

As for the drones . . . hmm. I guess I prefer the looks of darker timbers, of which there are many suitable for the drones. Blackwood is nicer than maple in the sense that a well-seasoned piece, well-broken-in, doesn’t need all that fancy tung-ing and whatnot to make it work. As Sweet himself said (thanks Jim), the N.A. hardwoods are too porous.

I guess I don’t know how permanent the polymerization of tung oil is. And why not just epoxy the bore? I guess if you’ve got a timber like maple that you really have to doctor up to make it acceptable, it’s not really a good alternative to blackwood or cocus, or even boxwood.

I’m not sure how much harm we’re doing by using things like the old standbys. Boxwood: it’s a weed. Blackwood: OK, so there are problems with it in Tanzania, but in Moçambique, the stuff is everywhere. And I mean EVERYWHERE. Now that Moçambique has a more stable government, and more porous borders, we might see some nice blackwood coming out of it as long as the Germans don’t extend their monopoly into that country. There is growing awareness for treating blackwood as a renewable resource, and probably a growing market for timber grown responsibly. As for cocus, I think now its price is high enough to serve as a deterrent. I do think it is a superior timber sonically. Yes, I have a set of cocus GHB drones, and yes, they are better than anything else I have ever heard.

I don’t think we should discount the other tropical timbers, though, when looking for other things to make instruments out of. Cocobolo is nice and dense and sturdy, as is bubinga.

So, I wanted to say I was wrong about not having seen GHB maple stuff, so egg on my face. Then I started rambling. Curly maple is a nice timber too. Regular maple . . . way too blond for my tastes. But there’s just something aesthetically displeasing about having to go through that much trouble to make the wood stable. Just me, though. :wink:

Stuart

33

Well, the treatment doesn’t sound too labor intensive
or costly. Four hours of soaking in tung oil–well,
soaking leaves you free to do other things. Maybe
the two coats of the finish tung oil are more trouble.
From what I can tell, these instruments remain
stable indefinitely–never heard of one becoming
porous, etc.
What’s motivating my interest is that I’m
impressed with the Sweetheart maple flute,
which sounds very good for a 250 flute.
I’ve played the other woods and liked them
the sound less well. I played a rosewood
Sweetheart briefly–they’re more expensive,
of course–and I have a Sweetheart rosewood
G flute. Well, I think the maple instruments
compare favorably. I’ve always thought
that maple instruments sound especially good.

I have a german recorder made of pear wood,
I think, which I left in the car one day
and found covered with wax. Couldn’t figure
out where it came from–now I know. Best

34

My understanding from what I’ve heard from makers and experimenters alike is that epoxy and polymers (polyurethanes, etc) are less permanent than a soaking in tung or linseed; water gets behind the coating at some point and the coat is rendered usless over time. The wax forced-by-pressure that companies like Moeck use I think works well – also keeps the quality of the maple there, if you like it’s sound (softer recorder tone), as opposed to a soaking in tung which hardens and makes the wood denser and more like - well, some other wood.
While I agree with your statement about aesthetics a bit, the difference, financially, can be major – a boxwood recorder can be hundreds to over a thousand dollars, an impregnated sycamore or maple one a hundred or less. Some of this has more to do with the work put in (a more “professional” model presumably takes more of the maker’s time and attention, and a better wood is therefore used by default). But a person looking to save major bucks is probably not in the market for a $1500 recorder anyway, and the impregnated maples play nicely enough.

Also, bear in mind that most flute makers working in boxwood, blackwood, etc., also soak their finished flutes in linseed as a final stabilizing treatment – while these woods are unquestionably better suited for woodwinds naturally, they will still require that treatment and subsequent oiling (especially the boxwoods and cocus – jury’s still out on blackwood) as a supplement to the maker’s linseed treatment. Point is, that while it can be argued that these treatments are not to stabilize the wood, as with the NA hardwoods, there is still is a no-less-troublesome procedure most makers deem necessary to protect the flutes during and after the making of their flutes. Bottom line, to me, though, is that these woods sound better and probably last longer than the NA hardwoods, regardless of whatever song-and-dance each wood is put through during the making process.
Gordon

35

The Sinclairs my band played were from the 80’s as well. So I guess the lesson from that regarding this thread is that 1) properly treated maple can hold up over some time and can make a good conical bored instrument and 2) that nobody has made them since the 80’s could mean that maple didn’t stand up to other factors in the craft (popularity of blackwood, arrival of delrin and polypenco, manufacturing demands, etc.).

Though I thought the maple Sinclairs were cool in that they packed a good punch and turned heads because of their tone and appearance, I agree that blonde maple isn’t exceedingly pleasing to the eye. That is especially true in the maple drones… rather blah looking. Even though these instruments were made by reputable pipe-makers, the blonde wood still bears the stigma of Pakistani-made pipes which are often made of a poor quality, blonde wood.

So maple seems to be a good alternative though it probably wouldn’t stand the test of time even if somebody like Olwell or Grinter made some stellar flutes out of the stuff.

Cheers,
Aaron

36

I’m a little late hopping in on this conversation, but weren’t many baroque and renaissance flutes made out of maple (as well as pear and boxwood)? I think these were also treated with oil, too, but you don’t see too many of them still around. I guess where I’m headed here, especially after hearing some nice sounding maple instruments, is that perhaps they don’t last like the cocus and blackwood flutes we see lingering from the early 1800s and on. However, just because they don’t last 200 years doesn’t mean they’re not a nice flute for our lifetimes. After all, permenance is just illusion… :boggle:

On a slight tangent, wasn’t someone on the board waiting on a dogwood Olwell? I wonder how that came out. I couldn’t find dogwood on that wood density page…

37

Jayhawk, that would be yours truly. I’m still waiting. gnashes teeth

Patrick says that dogwood is harder than most NA woods (not far from ironwood if I recall), but as to density, I’m not sure -I’m starting to suffer a bit of trepidation now because of this thread! :laughing:

Certainly that one will be getting oiled regularly as it’s not a resinous wood like blackwood. The only resinous woods in North America are the pines, and that’s no option at all.

I agree that curly hard maple is handsome as all get-out.

38

Thanks to all for this informative discussion.
I better understand the place of maple
in the scheme of woodwinds. Best

39

Nanohedron - With regard to NA resinous woods, that’s why I keep mentioning osage orange. Have you ever burned any? I had a batch delivered for my fire place that was dried for 2 years (reliable, honest source here), and it crackled and popped in the fireplace so badly we returned it for oak. In talking with the wood guy after the return, he said all osage orange does that and that it is resinous and that’s why it lasts so long, is water resitant, and insect resistant.

Granted, he is not a woodworker, but I am intrigued by it as material for a flute.

40

Jayhawk, I stand corrected! I know little about Osage orange…wasn’t it used for making bows? What color is it? I think a search is in order…