Bagwhistle plans

Whistle
1

I’ve reached 999 messages on this forum. I have been planning on doing this and to celebrate this 999th message. I’m putting the drawing, plans, photos to the latest bagwhistle on the internet.

http://www.bethmessiah.net/bagwsl.zip

The above address is a domain that I maintain for my congregation, it’s not on my regular site because I’m running low on room.

The bagwhistle started out as a cute toyish idea and it played Low-G and took and incredible amount of air. Dale had it once and could probably attest to how much air it took.

Later on, I designed it in High-D and it started to become more of a real instrument. At least you can play it without getting lightheaded.

But, if this instrument ever has a chance of becoming something, it needs to be shared with other instrument makers. So now we have an open source whistle!

This model has a valve in the blowpipe just like a real bagpipe.
The chanter is in High-D, standard D major scale.
The chanter also has a pickup tube inside the bag to help keep the airflow from being blocked by armpit pinching of the bag.

The drones are tuneable to notes of your preference. This has three drones. The delrin rod is slid in and out to tune a drone. There is also a gate that allows the brass drone pipe to be rotated into silience position to turn off the drone by covering the fipple. Also, to conserve air, there are little plugs that can be placed in the dronestock to replace a drone.

This bagwhistle design is now officially being released to the public, anyone who wants to build them has my blessing.

2

Daniel,
That is so cool!!! I know you’ve been working on this for a while. It looks really well designed/made. I can’t wait to hear a sound clip. Are you going to start offering them for sale?

Best,
Paul

3

I’ve sold a few privately, but I’d like to see what others could do with them as well.

4

Daniel, I tried attaching a soprano D whistle to my practice set, but didn’t have guts to venture out to adding drones. It was the only bag I had which I didn’t want to sacrifice on my first try…maybe I could get some artificial materials, stick’em up and make a bag, then add a whistle and hopefully a drone.

5

Was I the 999th person?

This is a great idea.

6

By the way Unseen, is that your pipes on your avatar?

I like the sound, and wish it was bellows-blown, not mouth-blown (I have had three hernia surgeries and mouth-blown instruments, except for whistles, can be a lot problematic).

7

When making a bagwhistle, you need to make the mouthpiece with idea of have some good backpressure in mind.

Bellows blown would require quite a large bellows. Whistles are just the opposite of bagpipes.

Bagpipes are generally high pressure, low airflow.

Whistles are generally low pressure, high airflow.

Check with pipe makers, they can tell you what pressure ranges are usually experienced, I’ve heard around 5 inches of water or so.

So if you use a commercial whistle to do this, you should use one that favors greater pressure in the mouth and less flow.

8

No, just some picture of Galician Pipes I found on google it was the only pic of Bagpipes I could fit but they are one of my favorite types and the next type I am getting. I know I am so strange.

GHBs take about 12 pounds of air pressure on the Chanter Reed. Dan you should probably have a really really narrow fipple that would help with air pressure.

9

hmm I used regular whistles (Waltons etc) and they jumped octaves too easily, but then I used Overton soprano D and it seemed to work just fine. fun fun!

10

The bagwhistle is a great idea. I have one of the low G (though it’s packed away), and it is indeed near impossible, breathwise. I do look forward to further developments.