Moof wrote: ↑Fri Jan 13, 2023 2:31 pm
I did a little more mouthpiece investigation just now, on the relative sizes of the windway opening on the plastic Howard and the aluminium MK. For this I used the highly accurate, scientifically validated how-far-in-can-you-get-a-cocktail-stick method. The results were as it appears to the eye—the Howard is narrower.
You've put your finger on a Long-Felt-Want, Moof, an easy method of gauging windway heights and tapers. It would much improve the quality of discussions like these if we had some real numbers available to us. The usual Vernier Calipers will work at the blowing end, but are useless thereafter, and of course all the interesting stuff happens thereafter. So let's put a few minutes thought into how at least some of us could equip ourselves to be able to contribute some facts.
My first thought is based on twist drills, available in specialist outlets in increments of 0.1mm. You don't use the pointy end, but the tail. Pick one that almost goes through into the window. Insert it backwards into the windway until it stops. Now measure what's protruding with the calipers, or even a rule. Withdraw it and measure the full length. The difference gives us the location of that thickness.
That, plus caliper measurements of the width of the windway at the blowing end should be enough to calculate any taper and therefore compute the width at the inaccessible window end. (We would also need to know the window length, but that's not hard to measure.) Or you could pick another drill, one that only just enters the windway, and get a location for that thickness. Again some sneaky maths would yield the thickness at the window.
If we want to be really picky, we should measure the diameter of the tails of the drills. Drills tend to cut a little oversize, so you'll probably find your 2mm drill is more like 1.9mm in diameter.
Just tried a 1.16mm drill in my Killarney D whistle - it stops 6.8mm in. By comparison, an old Dolmetsch Treble recorder starts at 3.5mm but tapers down to just over 1mm at the window! The Dyson of fipple instruments....
So that's one suggestion on how we could move from guesswork to knowledge. Any better ideas anybody? It's got to be able to work with curved and flat windways, so I don't think feeler gauges are going to cut it. But keep thinking.