Well making your first whistle is A heck of a thing. Eveyone after that get's better until you reach your optimal design. There are a lot of whistle making directions on the web. Almost eveything that can be done on metal tube can be done to pvc. The exception being if you want a flat bladed whistle and you're making it out of pvc you need to heat up a piece of metal and use that to flatten the plastic. trying to flatten it with a hammer and a piece of square bar stock could take a while... The first step after you get the actual tubing is making the moughtpiece. This is where most of the magic is cast. I suggest cutting a 5-7" section of pvc and just try different fipple, blade, windway, window, designs until you find one that works for you. If you're making a low Whistle, and you use the thin wall 3/4" PVC the actual measuremnts are OD: .843 ID: .705 Wall: .069 (all in inches) For a low whistle I have found that a window that is 1/2" across and 1/4" wide works fairly well. For higher pitched whistles it is better to make the windows smaller in dimentions. That's why experimentation is an important step. After you found a good Head desing that you like, fabricate it as perfect as you can make it. Smooth off all the Tooling marks at or around the blade and windway because they can cause weird sounds to occur. A two piece whistle is actually bit easier to make because if you mess up drilling the tone holes you can just scrap the boy, and you don't have to make a whole head piece again. After you have the head made and the body affixed (those little $0.12 PVC fittings work good for that, they can be found near the same isle as the PVC tube itself ) Use an accurate Electronic Tuner that reads ALL notes and not just E,B,G,D,A,E. (like guitar tuners). One that shows how flat the note you're working on is, is always a plus. Make sure the whistle is warmed up to playing temperature. If it is cold when you tune it, it will be sharp when it's warm! Slowly cut very small pieces of Tubing off of the open end of the whistle until it is almost to the bell note (lowest tone the whistle will make: D for a Low D whistle) when you get real close and are still a little flat File the rest of the material off that needs to be removed. If you're making a Low D and you saw a little bit too much off, you can always make an Eb whistle...
After you have the the bell note in tune fire up Flutomat
http://www.cwo.com/~ph_kosel/flutomat.html
and start figuring out hole placement. And most importantly, HAVE FUN! If you start getting frustrated go do something else. This is a great learning expieriance. Scientist have theorized that people who spend a few hours a day actually working with their hands and MAKING something are less likely to develope simptoms of depression.
-Cy
Justinus say guiness in hand worth two in ice-box.
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) The whistles sound great and they're costing me less than 5 bucks each and less than 1 hour of labor. I've learned a lot of tricks with hole placement to make the Low Wistles easier on the hand stretch. I'm surprised that using standard 1/2 inch PVC, would make the whistle sound so "flutey". My wife loves the sound and the dogs appreciate the mellow-er tone.
