Visit with Jonathan Walpole ("Paddler")

Irish Flute
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I had the very pleasant opportunity to spend some quality time last weekend with Jonathan Walpole (“Paddler”), and his extensive flute collection - antiques as well as his own designs. He has a wide variety of American & English flutes, (not to mention all his other instruments from folk to ethnic versions). Based on 20-plus years of collecting and flute research, Jonathan is making some very nice keyless flutes in a variety of woods. He has not widely promoted himself, preferring to make individual connections to flute players.

“The three models of keyless D flute I make are (1) A Pratten, large bore, large tone hole model, (2) a Rudall, with medium-large bore and medium-large tone holes, based on my #6264 original, and (3) an F. Riley replica with small bore and small tone holes based on an original Frederick Riley flute I own.”

Here is Jonathan’s website, written with more modesty than he deserves:

Walpole Flutes

I had plenty of time to play a number of Jonathan’s flute designs. I have a pretty strong affinity (if not prejudice) for Rudall style flutes: I feel that the resonances and harmonic overtones make them special, and I love my medium-holed R&R #4676.

I did like Jonathan’s Rudall replica, and despite my R&R leanings I was very surprised and impressed with the tone and ease-of-playing of his Pratten and Riley models.

The Pratten model: I’ve never really got on with the breath or embouchure requirements of Pratten flutes, but Jonathan’s design was extremely easy for me, and had a powerful tone that kept giving the more I pushed. To my ability, his replicas are every bit the match to the Grinter Pratten he let me play.

The F. Riley model is a smaller-holed flute with a rich, round tone, and is surprisingly loud. I’ve played Firth/Pond/Hall flutes, but found the Riley more appealing than my experiences playing those flutes, perhaps more open and capable of being pushed. I asked Jonathan why he chose the F. Riley as his model and he said:

"I’ve had a lot of different American flutes, including quite a few good William Hall & Sons, Firth Son & Co, Firth & Pond, W.A. Pond and Firth Pond & Co, as well as the Pfaff’s, Peloubets, etc, and the entire drawer full of other American makers. That F. Riley 4-key was the best of the lot in terms of it tone and response. Basically, I liked the way it played and sounded. So I thought it would be a good point in the overall design space that might suit people with small hands and who wanted a low breath requirement. And I think my replicas have managed to capture the resonance of the original, which is why when people try them they are invariably struck by the unexpected volume from such a small holed flute.

The other factor is that the F. Riley original I have is in absolutely pristine condition, and this probably helps it compared to some of the other American flutes I have. I once had an absolutely pristine Firth Son & Co 8 key which was also a really good player, but it had larger holes and represented a similar point in the design space to my Rudall.

I think a small holed Rudall would also be a good option in that part of the design space, but I didn’t have one to copy at that stage of the game either."

Experimenting with Different Woods

Jonathon has a well-aged and aging stash of flute woods, and he has also been experimenting with under-used wood species. Some of these need to be stabilized by vacuum resin infusion. One value this approach is that he can make some extremely light-weight yet strong flutes. They have the organic appearance of wood, but are completely stabilized against use and abuse. Some of his woods include:

"I have made flutes from quite a few different woods: Castello Boxwood, English hawthorn, Plum, Dogwood, Black Locust burl, and torrified Curly Maple. I have a large stock of stabilized woods including other similar woods like Pear, Apple, Madrone, Holly, Hornbeam, etc.

I also have some other well seasoned woods like Mountain Mahogany and Black Locust that don’t seem to absorb much resin when stabilized, but still make nice flutes."

(If I’ve mis-interpreted anything here, I’m sure Paddler will be along to correct it.

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Tom, it was nice to actually meet you in person after all these years of exchanging emails and forum posts!

So first of all, yes, the website is embarrassingly out of date, and not really representative of my current situation. There are good reasons for that, some of which I might touch on a bit later. But in a nutshell, I currently make flutes in low Bb, C, D, Eb, F and G. All are currently keyless, but I am also engaged in some key making work / prototyping.

My concert pitch D flutes come in three different varieties, as you mentioned above. I have a Pratten model, based loosely on a Boosey Pratten bore profile, but tweaked in a variety of ways for better performance at modern pitch. I have a Rudall model based on my original Rudall, Rose, Carte & Co (SN 6264), also slightly tweaked for less tuning slide extension. And I have the F. Riley, small holed, antique American replica, based on an original in my collection, but again slightly tweaked for less tuning slide extension for better performance modern pitch.

As for wood, I have a large stock of blackwood that has been seasoned for 50 years or more. I also have my own set up for vacuum-based resin infusion for stabilizing more porous woods. This basically fills the air spaces inside the wood grain with a heat curing resin, which once cured is inert and impermeable to moisture. The amount of resin absorbed is wood species dependent, and even varies within the same species, but aside from stabilizing the wood, it also significantly increases its density and improves the machining and finishing properties. This is not a short-cut process or a cheap way to avoid existing premium flute woods. It is actually much more time consuming and expensive than using the seasoned blackwood, and can only be done well using already seasoned wood. But it results in a flute with a different visual and acoustic aesthetic and different care and maintenance characteristics. It can also be a nice way to address allergy issues for those who can’t tolerate oily tropical woods, and don’t relish the prospect of playing a delrin flute.

One reason I haven’t been promoting what I do is because I’ve been wanting to do some side-by-side comparisons of the different materials, and see how they hold up over the long haul. I have been doing this for the past several years already.

I currently have each of my D flute models already made in several different stabilized and non-stabilized woods, allowing for some quite scientific comparisons. For example, I can quickly switch back and forth between, say, my Pratten flutes in blackwood and various stabilized and non-stabilized woods, to see if I can tell the difference between materials. Similarly for my Rudall model and Riley model. I can also take an instance of each different model, all made from the same material, and quickly switch back and forth between them to see what difference the model, bore profile, etc makes. And I can play the replicas along side the original antiques they were based on. This is the kind of thing Tom and I were engaged in all day last weekend, both of us taking turns playing and listening while the other played.

Being able to do this kind of scientific comparison (holding all variables constant except the one you are interested in) in the same acoustic space reveals some fascinating and visceral insights. I’ve done a lot of this myself, in isolation, but recently have had some other flute players (like Tom) over to play flutes while I listen. And I play them while they listen. I’ve only had a couple of people over so far, but I have been both surprised and reassured by the fact that all of us more or less agreed on what we were both feeling as a player and hearing as a listener, right down to some very subtle details and differences. I honestly hadn’t quite expected that level of agreement.

My plan had been to take this a step further and make some recordings for a blind, online, survey, but I’m not sure how valuable this will be, since a lot is lost in the recording and playback process, and most differences are dwarfed by the fact that you sound like you pretty much regardless of what you are playing.

Anyway, it is quite rare to have the opportunity to do this kind of tight, side by side, comparison, and I’ve been well aware of the fact that the moment I sell these instruments the opportunity for this kind of learning will have gone. Hence the absence of promotion.

Also worth mentioning at this stage, is that while I am interested in making a high quality instrument, I’m not really in this to scale up a flute making business to maximize profitability. I have sold the occasional flute, reluctantly, when my arm is twisted, and I am intending to sell more (thats what I tell my wife!), but I don’t make my living doing this and I have lots of other things competing for my time, which makes for unpredictable progress and a reluctance to spend my entire retirement stuck in my workshop breathing toxic wood dust. This is why I’ve been so slow to put up a proper website with price list etc. I am still a bit conflicted about where I want to take this. But I long ago committed to only sell flutes that I have already made. For this reason, I don’t take money in advance and put people on a waiting list.

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Here is a photo of some of Jonathan Walpole’ flute collection. Lots of antiques, plus a bunch of his own flutes.

Jonathan Walpole Workshop

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Tom put me to work there, pulling all those flutes out of their hiding places. Thats over half my collection there! And then the challenge is to put them all back safely again without getting mixed up. For this reason, I made a list.

If you are curious about what those flutes in the picture are, here is that list, going from bottom to top:

Anonymous Austrian Style 9-key

Original H.F. Meyer

Rudall, Carte & Co Radcliff model

Anonymous cylindrical bore Siccama (headless)

Hawkes & Son conical bore Siccama

Howlett 8-key

J.W. Moffat 8-key

Keith Prowse & Co single body 8-key

Keith Prowse & Co two part body 8-key (headless)

Blackman 8-key

Fentum 8-key

Metzler 8-key

Clementi & Co 8-key

Clementi & Co 4-key

Clementi 8-key

Clementi 8-key

Imlay 8-key

Walpole keyless F. Riley replica in stabilized hawthorn

Walpole keyless F. Riley replica in stabilized plum

Walpole keyless F. Riley replica in stabilized hawthorn

Walpole keyless F. Riley replica in stabilized dogwood

Walpole keyless F. Riley replica in blackwood

Original F. Riley 4-key

Firth Pond & Co 1-key

Firth Hall & Pond 4-key

Meacham 4-key

William Hall 6-key

Pfaff 8-key

Pfaff ivory head 8-key

J.A.W. Geib 8-key

Walpole keyless Rudall replica in blackwood

Walpole keyless Rudall replica in stabilized boxwood

Walpole keyless Rudall replica in stabilized boxwood

Walpole keyless Rudall replica in stabilized hawthorn

Walpole keyless Rudall replica in black locust burl

Original Rudall, Rose, Carte & Co (#6264) 8-key

Rudall & Rose #4676 8-key

Wylde from Rudall & Rose 8-key

Bilton 8-key

Walpole keyless hybrid Rudall/Pratten in blackwood

Walpole keyless hybrid Rudall/Pratten in stabilized plum

R. Cubitt (dealer) Boosey Pratten 8-key

Walpole keyless Pratten in blackwood/nickel silver

Walpole keyless Pratten in blackwood/copper

Walpole keyless Pratten in stabilized torrified curly maple/bronze

Walpole keyless Pratten in stabilized hawthorn/copper

Walpole keyless Pratten in stabilized hawthorn/copper

Grinter keyless Pratten in blackwood/silver

Walpole keyless Pratten in delrin

Anonymous cocus, length adjusted, rebored and new tone holes 8-key (Walpole Pratten)

And the side groups (left to right):

Firth Son & Co A

Walpole keyless G in blackwood/hawthorn

William Hall & Son F

Walpole keyless F in stabilized plum/fancy rings

Walpole keyless F in blackwood/nickel silver

Walpole keyless Eb in blackwood/nickel silver

Walpole keyless C in blackwood/bronze

Walpole keyless C in blackwood/nickel silver

Walpole keyless Bb in blackwood/copper

Boosey Eb 8-key

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I’m one of those who “twisted Jon’s arm” a while back and have one of his F. Riley D flutes made from English Hawthorne stabilized with resin and with water buffalo rings. It’s very light and comfortable to play and often receives compliments on its aesthetics and sound — both volume and intonation. (The player — not so much.) A friend — Laura MacKenzie — has one of the Pratten models, also in Hawthorne with buffalo rings. She makes her living playing music and, in her case, both the player and the instrument get fine reviews.

I twisted Jon’s arm once more and got a Blackwood model in F with patterned silver rings. That’s the one that sits on the desk and is used when I’m trying to learn tunes — again light in weight and easy fingering with the shortened spacing on the keys.

It was interesting making a purchase from someone who “doesn’t make flutes for a living.” We had lots of interaction about the details of the flutes with him as the maker and me as the intended user — sometimes a more difficult dynamic with a maker who needs to produce a volume of instruments in order to live the high life that musicians and those in the music business are so accustomed to.

Bottom line, these flutes work very well for me and I’m quite happy playing them. It’s too bad for me that Jon lives on the wrong coast of the US which keeps me from making a visit like Tstermitz.

Best wishes.

Steve

P.S. Have you ever seen a woodworking shop as clean and neat as the one in the flute photo tstermitz provides?

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Yes Steve,

quite a few actually! I’d say the messy, disorganized shops are by far the minority of the ones I’ve visited in person and viewed (in photos), though to some extent it can depend on what time of day you are visiting. There are reasons for this, of course, but I won’t divert the conversation at hand.

Cool collection Jon, and nice looking shop. Glad to hear some of your own instruments are making it out into the world. I hope the resin stabilized flutes catch on, those of us with allergies need more options than just solid polymer.

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Um, half your collection?!! Where’s the boggle emoji when you need one? I can’t begin to imagine how much work it involves just being the conservator of all those fine flutes, Jonathan, more power to ya! Thanks for the amazing tour! Just out of curiosity, what is your main go-to flute?

Just as a point of reference, I have a flute too. But if it were up to me, and not my money, I’d be more like you. ; )

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I know. Its embarrassing, and I feel I should try to come up with a few excuses, even though I know you won’t buy them. Maybe its enough to just shed some light on how this situation evolved?

It all started about 20 years ago when I started getting interested in making flutes. I thought it would be a good idea to get some first hand experience playing, examining and measuring a few different designs. I think Terry McGee’s research collection concept kind of nudged me in that direction, and got me thinking about serving a kind of apprenticeship with all the old makers of the past by studying their instruments and maybe trying to replicate a few.

So that was the seed, but I also thought that a lot of these old instruments had serious potential as playable instruments today, and that it was a shame to see them lost. So I started doing restoration in parallel with the studying. And I thought the restoration would be a good learning exercise that would also improve my own flute making. And it has. And I have restored a lot of flutes over the years, many of which have moved on.

So with these two goals in mind, the kind of flutes I went after were typically not the pristine instruments that players and collectors might fight over, but rather the neglected ones that required quite a bit of work to bring back to life and were more at risk of just ending up in the garbage. That makes it much less expensive to acquire a sizable collection, but it also lines up a lot of restoration work, such as crack repairs, block repairs, missing key fabrication, etc.

I was well into that process, and had moved quite a few flutes on to Blayne at IFS to sell on, having mined them for the data I was interested in, when I ran into some health problems, specifically with my hands, that required some surgeries and resulted in a few years interruption to flute playing, making and fettling. But my hands still worked well enough to purchase the occasional wrecked flute on eBay.

So, basically, I got stalled for a while and a backlog built up. Then when I got my hands working again I was torn between pushing my own flute models forward, doing more playing again, or resuming the restoration work. The restoration work got put on the back burner.

So thats my story, and I’m sticking to it. I never intended to have such a large collection, and I still don’t. But I do want to bring each of these back to a decent level of playability, and document whatever interesting information they hold, before moving them on. And I hope its clear from this explanation that none of this has really been about wanting to make money, either through restoration work or through flipping flutes on the market. You don’t really make any significant money in work like this anyway! It is incredibly time consuming, and the return for that time investment generally works out at less than minimum wage.

For me, its been about learning the craft thoroughly, and hopefully providing a community service in bringing antique instruments back into the playing community, while sharing some of their secrets with those who are interested.

As Tom rightly pointed out, what I really need is an apprentice!

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Amen to that, brother! An apprentice would be great, if you’re up to the task of teaching, which requires a lot of effort, day in and day out. By the way, you needed no explanation to any of us, but it is interesting how you got started and your motivation for collecting the flutes. It sounds like a great plan, if not the one that is hard to step back from your endeavor once you’ve got it going.

Too bad fate had it’s own ideas for your hands. Glad to hear you’re pretty well back now, and able to make them do what you want. I’m sure you are more aware now of not taking for granted that they are not machines, like I thought mine were when I was a milkman, throwing all of those milk cases around like they were light objects, along with the rest of my body!

I use light Mueller hand/wrist braces now especially before and after playing, if not while I play any instrument, and while I sleep at night. Here’s a link for anyone who might need some support;

By the way, Jonathan, is there anything linked to your given name, that means keeper and mender/maker of flutes? I imagine you know the other Jon that lives on the left coast, who did or is still doing the same thing as you? I also remember when you started asking your questions on here, a while back now about flutes. I am glad you got where you wanted to go, a rewarding and noble calling; congrats on your successes as a maker and restorer, and keeper of the futes! I basically wanted to do the same with stringed instruments, and I did work with them in repair for a little while, and that was pretty good, except for my indentured-ness with a certain shop owner and king of the realm. Ha!

I am very happy that I found Chiff, thanks to Dale and the others who kept it going for so many years, and now Blayne of course, for resurrecting it and keeping it going, thank you! It certainly kept me sane going through some changes in mid-life, etc entering into my “golden years”! I love playing the flute and low whistles and I’m getting back into flute again now after a little lay off. Great fun!

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Or an analyst! (With friendly grin.)

Best wishes.

Steve

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