I don’t want to spam both boards, but maybe there are more whistlemakers hanging around here than there, so I’ll ask again:
How much heavy toolery is needed to work with PVC and metal? What kind of tools do you use for making your whistles, and how much would be possible with hand tools? How do you produce (carve?) and sharpen the blade, what kind of saw, if any, do you use for giving the head its final form, and how do you make the block fit so snugly?
When I look at hand made whistle heads, or pictures of those, it all looks like severe wizardry to me, but I believe that with the right tools and strategies it must be doable by mere humans. If you want to share how you make your whistle heads, I would be most interested.
I build in PVC only so someone else will have to answer the metal question.
Tools I use:
Hacksaw
Mitrebox
Vice
Drillpress
1/2" Forstner bit
5/8" Forstner bit
Assorted standard drill bits.
Coping saw
Dremel tool (with router attachment and several handmade jigs and guides)
An assortment of files and sandpapers.
There are many different ways to accomplish fitting the block. The way I do it is to drill out the inside diameter of the headpiece with a 5/8" Forstner bit. The Delrin stock I use is 5/8" in diameter so it fits snugly.
I make the curved cut for the mouthpiece using a coping saw by hand. It’s never perfect, but it’s comfortable and I think the slight variations from whistle to whistle give them character…
The simple answer is that it could take very few tools (ie. a jewelers saw, a hammer, a few files, a handheld drill and some sandpaper) or it could take a lot (a lathe, milling machine, broacher, table saw, etc.). It just depends upon how quickly, accurately and repeatably you wish to make them.
If you are just playing around, I wouldn’t worry about tooling up. Just get a few pieces of pvc and the first set of tools that I mentioned and see what you can do. This process will then open more pointed questions the answers of which will help move you in the right direction.
http://www.onlinemetals.com
Thanks to Erik Tullberg for posting that link a while back.
They really are great people to do business with, and are one of the very few places that will sell in small quantities.
Gary, I’m glad that they’ve been useful to you! They’ve always been great to work with for me, too.
Funny story (stop me if I’ve already told it): I had ordered some aluminum tube from them a couple months back and the postal engineer left it on my front porch (in -30 temps). I brought it inside and it sat for a while. We had a dinner guest that night and sat around talking as I opened the package. Thinking I was funny, I stuck my tongue to the tube. Yeah, it was still cold enough to freeze my tongue. I didn’t enjoy dessert.
For brass, steel, and copper:
Milling machine
Drill press
Small lathe
Cobalt end mills, sizes 1/8" through 1/2" in 1/32" increments
Cobalt drill bits, sizes 1/16" through 1/2" in 1/64" increments
Center punch (automatic is good)
Polishing heads (3) emery, tripoli, red rouge
chamfering tools for the holes
good set of needle files (Stubbs are the best)
small metal-cutting bandsaw
Bench shear (throatless preferred)
2-ton arbor press
Propane or MAPP torch
“Blue Steel” marking fluid
Carbide scribe
6" and 12" calipers, dial or digital (preferred)
1" capacity digital micrometer
Belt sander
Hand drill
Small anvil
ball-peen hammer (8oz is a good size)
Hand magnifier
Safety glasses
Leather or heavy denim work apron
Brazing rod and flux
Silver solder and flux
tin/silver solder and flux
wire -feed welder with 0.035" flux-core wire (nicety, not necessity)
I am working on a series of whistle-making videos to be available on the Serpent Music website, and on CD, late summer 2003.
If anyone needs brass tubing 0.040 wall, or chrome molybdenum steel, 0.035" wall, I can get it in quantity, in the following OD sizes
9/16
5/8
3/4
1" (1/16" wall in brass)
I will sell it cut to length ($1 per stick cutting charge for onesies), or FOB in 12-foot lengths (large quantities only, or you’ll be paying more for freight than for the metal) email or PM me for prices. I am cheaper than anyone else mentioned, because I’m not going to try to rip you off for buying small quantities.
Any decent plumbing supply or Home Depot will have all the copper tubing you could ever want.
Have fun!
serpent
Look in the yellow pages under “plastic Supply” or somesuch, we have one that does some sort of production work, and they also supply plastics to the sign making trade, and hobbyists.
For safety sake, don’t forget a dust mask!! PVC dust stays in your lungs FOREVER, literally. It will still be there long after your mortal remains have returned to dust. Don’t mean to be a bummer, but this is important. Whenever possible, work PVC wet, to keep the dust down: use wet/dry sandpaper and dip the pipe into a bowl of water from time to time. The stuff is safe to work with, as long as you take some simple, reasonable precautions.
Safety glasses (face shield is even better), especially around the machine tools, and ESPECIALLY if you use the Dremel.
Don’t cut your metal tubing with a tubing cutter unless you want to spend lots of time deburring the end. Use a bandsaw, or a hand-operated hacksaw instead. The tubing distorts badly when cut with a roller wheel cutter, and you must get the end parallel with the rest of the tube or your whistle will be well-nigh impossible to get perfectly in tune.
And ditto to Sandy - in fact, if you’re using machine tools, the absolute first rule of thumb is READ THE SAFETY INFORMATION. And keep a good first-aid kit handy. A mill can throw a loosely-clamped metal tube so hard that it will penetrate skin like a bullet, and a lathe will throw it’s chuck key at you very hard, should you accidentally forget to remove it.
Make very, very sure that your machines have stopped before touching blades, and ALWAYS unplug them before trying to change cutters.
Okay, if you’re sufficiently scared now, you may go make whistles!
serpent
Bare bones basics for a simple whistle voicing in PVC tube is…
1)Hand Drill,electric or handcrank and bits
2)Small Bench Vise
3)1 or 2 Small Sharp Chisels 1/4" to 1/2"
4)Razor Knife
5)Home-made Bow Lathe or Rasp File
The voicing is the most simple,it’s The Susato. The top end of the tube is beveled all the way around at a 30 degree angle on the outside with a sharp chisel on the lathe. A “cap” of the same diameter tube is beveled on the inside to a matching 30 degree angle.
This cap is then held upright in the vise and the square “window” is drilled “on the edge” with a 1/4" drill bit to a depth equal to the length of the labium “bevel” on the tube + the length of the window combined. The cap is then glued on the end of the matching tube for a combined window and labium ramp.
A cork fipple plug is carved to match the diameter of the tube and a slice is made on one edge for a windway floor. Insert the cork,line up the floor with the labium edge and you’re finished.
(P.S. you can substitute the Bow Lathe with a sharp file to bevel the PVC tubing, but this process is tedious)
The “Phase Shift” between octaves is cured by a conical bore, not the voicing window. The voicing/embouchure is “The Frequency Generator”.
The size of the voicing window diameter(L + W)/2 is a perogotive of the designer, within certain limits, generaly between 1/4 and 5/8ths of the bore diameter. Small is quiet, large is loud. The width to height ratio determins tone color, wide/short is reedy, narrow/long is chiffy. The formula for the “false Bore Extension” of the aircolumn is…
D/E squared X (0.94 X E + T)
D = Bore Diameter
E = Embouchure diameter desired
T = Thickness of tube
This value must be subtracted from the 1/2 key frequency wavelength, along with the false extention at the bore end(D/3), for proper measurement between the embouchure center and the bore end.
Did I answer your question? I hope so,if not please ask for clarification.
Could you provide me a mathematical definition of “voicing window diameter”? L + W X 2 doesn’t make sense to me as a diameter. It would give a perimeter length. Did you mean (L + W)/2? I’m assuming that when you refer to the bore diameter, you mean the actual diameter of a round tube.
Also, how does one determine how much to taper the bore so as to accurately match the two octaves?
