I am an amateur flute player with an interest in which woods are used to make Irish flutes. I am familiar with:
African Blackwood (Grenadilla)
Mopane
Pink Ivory
Boxwood
Cocus wood
Honduran Rosewood
King wood
Are there any other wood species out there suitable for Irish flute making? I’d like to buy my own wood to send to my maker. What are the dimensions for turning blanks to make an Irish flute? I need to know so that I purchase the correct sized blanks.
You should try doing a search on this site–there are numerous threads on the subject of woods for flutes.
Buying your own wood is a bad idea in my opinion. I’ll dare to say that majority of flute makers build inventories of woods, that they’ll season and prepare over time (sometime many years) to make sure of the quality of their flutes. They know what to look for and what they will need in the raw materials. It is one reason why in most cases the wooden flutes are more than the flutes made with manmade materials.
When you buy a wooden flute from an established maker, you aren’t seeing all the rejected wood that cracks, warps, or just didn’t make it, only the finished product.
Maybe you can get a good deal on wood, but I’d find a flute maker willing to work with you first.
Welcome to C&F ~
+1
Agreed.
In fact, you might struggle to find a maker willing to work with timber you roll up with, unless perchance you have been correctly storing and seasoning it yourself, but even then… And if a maker will take the job, they aren’t going to guarantee getting an instrument out of a minimum amount of correctly sized billets. Why would they potentially waste their time and effort on timber they haven’t selected and prepared themselves? There may be younger, less experienced makers who have not been in the game long enough to have their own well established timber stocks and who would be in much the same position themselves in sourcing materials as a random punter, I suppose, and if you were lucky enough to source something rare nowadays like good quality cocus, even a more established maker might be willing, but talk to your maker first!
Welcome to the forum Gleo. It may be a good idea to visit as many flute makers websites as you can and study the various timbers that they have to offer for their flutes. Once you have found the maker using the wood you want for your flute, it would be advisable to make the deal with the maker using his/her sourced timber. The idea of sourcing your own and then finding a maker willing to use it seems fraught with too many complications. I am not saying that this route is not possible, but probably not advisable.
Happy Hunting 
There are enough good flute makers offering enough different kinds of wood that you should be able to get what you want without buying the wood yourself. (I’ll add my voice to the chorus of people advising against that.) And if you really want to get off the beaten path, Geoffrey Ellis (above) is yer man: http://ellisflutes.com/ (His vacuum resin infusion technique allows him to work with an unusually wide range of woods.)
Maurice Reviol works with a cast bore process, and can use woods that might otherwise not be a first choice for flutes. I gather it’s a process used for some time with other instruments (bassoons, perhaps?), and yields stable results. He may be willing to work on a special project.
I know that many makers buy and store woods, monitoring them for years until they are stable and ready to use. They still have a certain loss factor. They might allow you to visit and select from their stockpile. I know many mandolin makers will do this. Is there a reason you want to buy your own stock?
It’s not a good idea to buy and season wood yourself unless you know what you’re doing.
As a carver (netsuke), I had to learn the hard way. Boxwood, for instance, takes at least 4 years to season, once you’ve found a log that is free of knots and has a straight grain. The log’s ends have to be sealed with wax, it has to be stored on its end in conditions where the temperature is constant and away from rain or freezing, then the log has to be turned every fortnight or so until it’s ready. It’s the same for any hard wood and only a year or so’s shorter time for softer woods. If you’re lucky, it won’t have split, nor will you find internal defects.
In my experience, there’s as much wood lost as there ever is carved or turned if you’re really concerned about the condition of the piece before starting work on it.