The external appearance is really the only difference. The two styles are technically identical internally and they certainly sound the same. They appear different because of the difference in shape on the outside and the different configuration of rings, but internally they are identical.
More info » Celtic Style Flutes » Traditional Style Flutes.

The addition of a tuning slide certainly makes a flute very heavy if the metal used is very thick. The tuning slides I make have very thin walls. The wall thickness on my tuning slides is one quarter of a millimetre, so that means that when you have a tuning slide which has a nineteen millimetre bore, the outside of the outer tube is twenty millimetres. So it's nineteen on the inside and twenty on the outside and the four wall thickness equals one millimetre – that's four quarters. Lot's of other tuning slides that I have seen have half millimetre wall thickness but it tends to make the flute very heavy.
More info » Tuning Slides » tuning slide prices.

It can do. One of the main problems with putting metal inside timber is that timber is inclined to move with climate and temperature changes and metal doesn't move to the same degree. So if timber wants to move but is constricted by the metal inside, it has a tendency to crack. If the metal is very thin walled, the metal will give a little bit with the movement of the flute and if the head is not fully lined, well then over the distance of the head the timber can move and the contact with the metal is only thirty millimetres of the head's length. So therefore it reduces the danger of cracking by quite a lot.
More info » Tuning Slides » tuning slide prices.

Yes they do and how that's compensated is that the joint of the flute is a tuning devise and can be pulled out up to five millimetres. This allows all of the tuning that will be necessary to keep the flute perfectly in the pitch it's designed to be in.
More info » Tuning Slides » tuning slide prices.

Certainly they can. It has happened that people buy a flute without a tuning side from me and then months or even years later they decide that they would like a tuning slide added to their flute. So they send me the flute and I add a tuning slide for them.
More info » Tuning Slides » tuning slide prices.

Yes I can, but I prefer to make a new body for the flute and 'block-mount' the keys. What I generally do is trade the original body if it is in good condition – I 'buy it back' from the customer and that off-sets the price of the new keyed body with however many keys they want. The better the condition of the original body, the more I give them for it up to its original value. Then I make the new body to fit their original headjoint. If you are interested in having keys added to a keyless flute, kindly contact me so we can discuss your needs and the pricing.

Maurice Reviol has keyed some of my keyless flutes for various people in th past – he uses 'post-mounted' keys and does a very good job. You can see a comparison between block-mounted and post-mounted keys in the images below.

Above: Martin Doyle's block-mounted keys on a Martin Doyle nine key cocus wood flute.
More images of this flute can be viewed here.

Above: Maurice Reviol's post-mounted keys on a Martin Doyle (three key) African Blackwood flute.
More images of this flute can be viewed here.

Yes I do – I make Baroque flutes based on an eighteenth century Rottenburgh flute that I really like. I have made these classic single key four piece instruments (with a register foot for tuning the bottom note) from both African Blackwood and Irish Boxwood.
More info » Baroque Flutes.

No, my headjoints are not fully lined. The reason for that is the more metal you put inside a flute, the more of the wooden sound you loose. So I prefer a completely unlined head joint without any tuning slide for the sake of tone. Then after that, as a compromise, I will use a short tuning slide which doesn't fill the head-joint completely to retain as much of the wooden tone as possible. Flutes with headjoints that are fully lined often give a very metallic sound.
More info » Wooden Headjoints.

When the timber comes to my workshop, the blank sticks are first of all bored and then left to settle. After a number of weeks of settling, they are reamed and then left to settle again. Then they are turned, the finger holes are cut into them and they are once again left to settle. They are then polished, the parts are put together, the rings are added and the flute is finished at that point.

Yes I do make left-handed flutes and the cost is the same as for the right-handed models – I do not charge more for left-handed flutes.

We have added fingering charts to this website for the purpose of helping flute players to understand the fingering of simple system keyless D flutes.

The first fingering chart would apply to Irish traditional music. The second fingering chart has a number of suggested accidental notes for those wishing to play Baroque tunes or art music etc. PDF versions of both of these fingering charts have also been added for those who want to download and print them.