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(Meme)
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Handmade usually means there are no adjusting screws.
Probably all precision engineered items which need very accurate adjustment, have adjusting screw (or similar) provision for making these adjustments - except flutes!!!
Well designed adjusting screws are VERY reliable.
If a flute does not have them, then any adjustment to the linkages between keys will take several hundred times longer. It is done by gluing bits of paper, `sausage skin` etc, to tiny bits of metal involved in the linkages - trial and error fashion.
This glue is very lose to surfaces that are lubricated. Lubricant tends to migrate, and soften the glue, which on very small surfaces, is precarious at the best of times.
So you are paying a whole lot more for adding a lot of problems to getting the instrument adjusted and keeping it reliable.
My guess is that the practice of not using adjusting screws stems form the fact that the hand-making of flutes branching from the jewelry & silver-smithing trades, where training, expertise and preoccupation are in appearance rather than considerations of precision engineering.
Perhaps it should be pointed out that oboes need at least as much precision in their mechanism as flutes, yet on a professional oboe you will find around 20 adjusting screws. I don`t think any oboe is made without adjusting screws. The world of flute players is a world where there is a lot of conning going on, and belief in things that cannot be substantiated.
Hand made flutes may also have soldered tone holes, which probably have no benefit over WELL-MADE `rolled` tone holes, and cost far more to make.
In my view, the label of `hand-made` is put on a flute to oblige those players who erroneously believe that by paying a whole lot more for their flute, they will get a flute that plays better. It becomes little more than a marketing exercise, with all the BS that is associated with marketing.
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