The first question I am often asked is 'how long does it take to make a recorder?'  and I often find this rather difficult to answer. I usually say that I make about 40-50 recorders per year working out at a bit less than one per week, which usually seems to be a satisfactory response. In reality I tend to make all my instruments in series, that's to say I bore, ream and turn the basic wooden tubes that form all recorders, in batches of around 20 to 40 at a time. My workshop is now quite well set up in this respect and I find it the most efficient way of making the machined parts. Even the big basses of the consorts, I tend to make about 5 or 10 at a time. The parts are then stocked for anything up to 3 years before they are finished off, often in small batches of 4 to 6 at a time. I find if I try to finish more than this at once, I can get confused between instruments and consequently have problems planning the voicing and tuning. The ad-vantage of working in this way is that I am able to work gradually on the wood, which is at the same time stabilising itself between processes. This means that the time spent between starting an instrument and finishing can be anything from one year to three or four years, depending on when the batch of parts was made. Naturally there are some drawbacks and when there is an emergency, I can't make extra instruments fast. I also have to be very careful at each stage of the machining process, because any mistake could be repeated on every instrument! On the whole though, I feel that the advantages of this system outweigh the disadvantages, and I think that most of my recorders are very stable as a result.
I make almost every part for my recorders, including most of the tools I use. I have had some key parts made, where the time saving is immense, but even here, the complex, tapered shape of the touches, still requires about two hours work, only on the part sticking out above the fontanelle.   

Pitch
I think that in common with many other woodwind makers, I have a hard time with pitch. It is very difficult to set a standard that you can keep to, because the pitch of an instrument is influenced by many factors such as: blowing, temperature, humidity and probably even by air pressure.
When a new instrument is made and ready to be tuned, it is of course flat. The tuning procedure involves bringing the instrument up to pitch by removing wood from the finger holes and bore. This is possibly the reason why many instruments tend more toward the flat rather than sharp side, because it is in general, easier to remove wood than to replace it. In my earlier years, I was often told that my instruments were too sharp. When I asked as to how this was measured, the reasons given were normally pretty vague. If you have a good instrument, often you will judge any new instrument in terms of this 'standard' to which you have been accustomed. I feel this was often the case with my earlier instruments, added to the fact that I was not a well established maker, led to me feeling that I was tuning too sharp. However, over the last few years, I've made a conscious effort to raise the pitch of my instruments, which had possibly become too low. This is especially important for modern instruments, where the tuning standard is often far sharper than a=440hz and where players are often accompanied by instruments like vibraphone and marimba that cannot be tuned by their players. I feel though that the more we try to set a norm the more this will be ignored for differing reasons, and perhaps a new international pitch standard should be defined. I recently had the chance to compare modern a=440hz tenor recorders by two of the biggest Japanese manufactures and found that there was a quarter tone difference between the two instruments. I found myself thinking that if even they, huge companies with all their resources can't get it right, what chance do we, the small fish have.