Chiff and Fipple Forums

Pretty much any Bb or A (alto) will work. It's not the whistle so much as the player that make that style.

EJ posted a big trove of Spokes goodness today.

Soodlum's - bought at a flea market years ago.

An electrician's deburring tool (Sears) works wells for getting rid of the nasty edges on metal tubes. I also recommend getting a small T-handle taper reamer (available @ most hardware stores) for rounding up tube holes and tweaking them to size. Deburring Tool http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/...

Looks like I stirred up a hornet's nest. No ill will was intended. I've been in the profession, myself, for 40 years and have met plenty of creative, as well as non-artistic folks therein. One of the most famous whistlesmiths around was an engineer by trade.

I'd pretty much agree - engineers can be way too cautious (anal?) call it safety factor or something else. The point was that engineers are driven to quantify, the artistic would likely resist that as being unrealistic, at least as far as the musicality of various whistles. I'm not saying there isn'...

Like herding cats - too many artistes/too few engineers here.

Great! - Glad you were able to make it sound good. My first homemade whistle looked far worse than yours. Fit and finish will come with time.

I've cut Hoover-type windways using two methods: 1. 1/8" extra-long mill cutter chucked in a drill-press that has a cross-slide vise mounted on the table (aka the poor-man's milling machine). Clean up & final shaping with needle files. 2. 1/8" and 1/4" wide woodworking chisels (Se...

You've got the right stuff for a high D whistle. Gonzato's construction method will work with this tubing, but be prepared to experiment with window length/width and block shape to get a non-breathy sound. Mack Hoover type construction works much better, but is considerably more difficult to reprodu...

Interesting stuff, and entirely consistent with some limited experience, here. Commonly available (in US hardware stores, at least) 3/4" OD aluminum tubing makes a great sounding alto A. Nominal ID (based on 0.048" wall) is 0.654" or 16.6 mm. Measured ID's range from 0.625" (15.8...

H'mm - If I could magically play an instrument of my choosing excellently and no other, it would be either tenor sax or clarinet. In the real world, I've played accordion, bass & six string guitars over the years but not very well. In the interim, I managed to misplace a finger, so the whistle b...

In what way is the Bluebird different than a JF tweaked Generation D?

Best wishes, also, from Indiana. Thanks for everything you've done for the magnificent obsession.

Thanks for the link, mrblister.