The experience of Serpent Music: I began from scratch, researching commercial whistles, building some from the Web and from books, and finally deciding to design my own, completely. Here are the discoveries I made:
Making a head that works is pretty easy.
Making one that works well is quite a bit harder.
Making one that works well and takes a reasonable amount of air is downright daunting.
Making one that works well, takes a reasonable amount of air, and sounds good begins to approach the impossible.
Doing all of that in a production environment without machine tools (metal or wood) or injection molding equipment (plastics) is very shaky, indeed.
To see some of the steps you need to go through to make whistles, head and all, in production, go to Stacey O'Gorman's site at:
http://www.albawhistles.com and follow the "whistle making" link.
To see some of my forming tools and equipment,
http://www.serpentmusic.com/toolmaker and view the jpeg files. The solid looking aluminum blocks are the dies I use to form and set the blade on the whistle - I have 4 different sizes (OD) 9/16, 5/8, 3/4, and 1 inch.
First, two 3/4" thick aluminum blocks are matched up and drilled through and tapped to accept 1/4-20 cap screws. The blocks are then bolted together and sides are milled square and true. Placed in a drill press, I drill down the center, between the two blocks, to the needed diameter less 1/64 inch (to clamp the tube). I then mill a rectangular slot at 90 deg to that, centered, to be the guide for the blade punch.
The blade punch is milled from HSS drill stock, using cobalt end mills.
The die and punch are then assembled and operated using a 2-ton arbor press. Once the required depth has been determined and scribed on the punch body, a steel stop block is welded to the punch, allowing 0.020" extra travel. The travel is then adjusted to the proper point with shims fastened to the die. This allows for the use of the same punch-and-die set on different thicknesses of material.
I'm in the middle of putting together a set of Web videos showing the process of whistlemaking by me, including making the tools, milling the curved windway, and turning the tuning slide. That's an extended project that will likely take until the end of the summer to complete. Meanwhile, if you have any questions of me, please don't hesitate to email or PM me.
Cheers, best wishes on your venture!
serpent
