Safe to say that many players are more experienced than I. Still I have good ears from playing guitar and violin and recording for decades. I use the word flute for fife, loosely, but not the other way around, as not all flutes are fifes. Secondly, the traditional key for fife is Bb, and my fifes are of several different keys.
White Pine My first goal was to make a fife in D, ovrall a more common key than Bb. Northern white pine is inexpensive, soft but strong, easy to work, lightweight for its strength. White Pine vibrates along with the sound of the air inside the fife. The wood creates a sort of feedback with the vibrating air column. This gives white pine fifes brightness and breathiness to the sound --voice-like, and reed-like.
Black Walnut and mahogany were the first hardwood fifes I made. The woods costs more than pine, and are much harder to work. I had already made a black walnut panflute with excellent results -- notes clean, pure and quick to sound. Recently a muti-instrumental woodwind player tested a bunch of my fifes and settled on the black walnut --his favorite. His playing is delicate and sweet. That was his basis for choosing black walnut. Otherwise hemight have chosen Sissoo, my favorite.
Curly Maple fifes with their unique flashing beauty, have a good hardwood fife sound. Curly Maple is used in making violins, which I play. Some guitar makers (Guild) have have used maple for sides and back. These are not as 'ringy' as those with rosewood sides and back, but they sound great finger-picked --less 'jangly.' In violins, the sound post position on the curly maple bottom inside the violin is crucial to the sound quality. So that is something special about the 'curly' grain.
Butternut , also called white walnut, is a cousin of Black Walnut. It is less hard, and less 'bendable'. also much lighter in weight. But unlike black walnut, butternut is dimensionally very stable. It was a favorite for doors and furniture a hundred years ago. It makes a fife sound between pine and black walnut. When I first made Bb fifes --rather long with a 1/2 inch bore --I chose butternut as the first hardwood because of its relative softness and stability .
Eastern Red Cedar is really a juniper. A great deal of good can be said about it. It smells great, and the grain is very close especially for a softwood. And it is not that soft. One player preferred it to the very hard buckthorn fife. The 'voice' is more like a Janis Joplin voice than a Linda Ronstadt voice. The wood really vibrates along with the note. With its varied grain and color, this wood is a winner. When one carves eastern red Cedar, a sharp knife leaves a polished surface on the wood.
Buckthorn --I considered this my hardest fife. It is not easy to find a piece of Buckthorn big enough to make a fife. The grain is tropical, golden, and iridescent. It resembles osage orange. The wood itself is the most unringing-est (anecoic) wood I have ever worked. This makes a fife whose wood interferes the least with the air column. To some players the sound is plain, to others it is pure.
Mahogany is another hardwood also used in stringed instruments. Not native to where I live, I salvage some now and then from furniture projects or construction. I got one batch meant for table legs. This wood makes a golden brown fife similar in sound to black walnut. Mahogany actually is an evergreen and so technically a softwood, but it is not soft. Mahogany comes in so many it is hard to comment on a particular quality --mahogany guitars are not as jangly as rosewood (sides and back). The true Honduras variety can be extremely hard. Phillipine mahogany is not a mahogany.
Sissoo fifes have a husky sound, very lively and robust. They are my personal favorites. The wood is very hard, a cross betwen teak grain and rosewood color. My limited supply was once fencing for a Girl Scout Camp in the 60's. It was lying on the ground then until the 80's And when I carved a tree into a figure of an Indian woman for the camp. I was offerred the wood. Sissoo is nearly totally impervious to rot. It was also used to make homes in India. It is hard to work. Many woods, like red cedar, witch hazel, and sycamore bend or contract while being bored out. Sissoo really grips the drill, but the warm sound and handsome dark looks are well worth the effort.
Beech , dry and with a varied grain, makes a surprisingly bright mid-range fife. The attack is very good. The wood is hard, but not as hard as walnut, not as bendable --in fact brittle. Perhaps this gives it a certain brilliance. I made one for the looks of the wild grain patterns, and was surprised by the pleasant sound. This is one one fife where I can really hear the difference from the others.
Teak is a wood I have recently tried for fifes -- another winner. I found some choice pieces at a marine consignment shop in RI. Teak --Thai teak --is waxy and fairly hard. It makes a superb fife, easy to play, good attack on a note, clear and mellow sound. The wood contains a natural wax, and I wonder if that wax fills the air pockets to make it sound so great. Wax may even store sound. In the old days we made 'telephones' with two waxed Dixie Cups stretched betwen a waxed string. Teak vies with sissoo as my favorite.
Buttonwood is also known as Sycamore. I tried to rewrite this posting on eBay, as more people call it Sycamore. My sycamore stock has an interesting story. It came from a mill which made Union army uniforms. These wood 'ingots' were made into buttons, and are very old. The wood is like maple and harder, often with a subtle curly grain with waves very close together. Sycamore was often used by violin makers including Stradivarius in place of maple. Makes a great fife. Hard to work and unruly due to heat of boring, but very stable. As old as these pieces are, none are checked. When i come out with a more tweaked advanced fife, it will probably be of this stock.
Staghorn Sumac is soft and contrary to work. The wood is a striking green. This is not the poison variety, but a small bush or tree which produces very dark red berries arching upward like flames. The wood is light, although classified as a hardwood. It's sap makes great violin bow rosin! I was cherishing a grove of huge rare trees, when the state plowed everything into the swamp to make a highway.
Witch Hazel --I have finally made fifes made from this impossible wood. Unless completely cured ait seems to have a life of its own when worked. It warps intensely just while being cut into blanks on the table saw. I cut blanks of this wood from a toppled witch hazel, the largest of its kind I have ever seen. Much unruliness in wood is due to presence of water in it. Even dried wood keeps 6 percent of its total water capacity filled. This heats up from drill friction, and expands 2000 times to become steam. Witch hazel is used to make dowsing rods, so it may have some unusual affinities for water. Once cured, it is very tame and stable, and turns beautifully on the lathe. Witch hazel fifes sound great, like walnut or better. The grain is closer and even iridescent. So another wood deemed to be 'of no commercial value' by the books, makes a great fife.
Rosewood --I have made one rosewood fife. It is nice, no doubt about it. Sounds and plays great. Does it represent a huge quantum jump over the others ? Not really. The inside polishes very nicely just from boring. It fits the criterion of fifers who say 'harder is better' for fife wood (and for piercing eardrums). Other woods such as grenadillo are also quite hard, but often sound more neutral and less vibrant to me. I think alot of other hardwoods give rosewood a run for the money.
American Holly is not a winter tree, as supposed from the Christmas ads, but it is one of the few trees that have a blue tinge to the wood. Betwen that and a creamy white color, it makes a beautiful fife. The close hard grain makes a fine note, good attack on the note, as good as any other hardwood. I like it alot because it resembles boxwood, which was a favorite of early flute makers. Lightweight for its hardness.
Boxwood, yes i have some, 'on the hoof' but I will not make a fife out of it until skill levels have increased, and I have a really special or bozarre instrument to make of it. The workability of such a wood is crucial to success in making a flute. Much stress is induced or released in the working of the wood. So far I have not had any need to put rings of metal around the end grains of my instruments to keep them from splitting. Perhaps this would be a good place to go on to workability of woods.