I made a Yellowheart whistle for a board member who soon afterwards asked me if I could make him a yellow Delrin whistle: seems he has a Case knife with a yellow Delrin handle and thought this material would make a cool whistle. I tried searching for the material with no luck, but this fellow was more persistent. He found a supplier who carries:
RED, ORANGE, YELLOW, GREEN, BLUE, VIOLET, BLACK, WHITE & NATURAL (tannish, I think) acetal plastic, which is generic for Delrin.
I have an inquiry out to these people and hopefully they won’t require huge minimum orders. I can see green/white whistles for NY Jets fans, blue/orange for Syracuse alumni and fans, all green for dyed in the wool Irishpeople, etc.
Is this something that people might seriously be interested in?
This same company also does CNC machining and I’ve asked for an estimate on making my normal metal fittings in black acetal. I made one whistle in birdseye maple with “handmade” black fittings and it was quite striking in a sort of Japanese way. Other light colored woods would look good this way too.
Well, Paul, if you had been offering those colors when I ordered my Delrin whistle last year, I probably would’ve ordered it in green (since that’s my favorite color), depending on the shade.
I’d be up for a purple one… Of course, if you ask Daniel Bingamon, he’ll tell you all about my obsession with purple whistles… Used to be a picture on his site of one of his Basswhistles in purple - which is now in my studio.
Purple delrin? Honey? It’s time to beef up the savings account again!
Business is business, alas.
I talked to the plastics supplier today. This stuff costs $6.50 per foot, which is on a par with some of the wood I use. Of course Delrin would be much less prone to splitting than a costly piece of Snakewood or Pink Ivory.
The bad news is that I can’t just buy a foot of each color I want. If they have it in stock, I can get a four footer. Special orders are a minimum of EIGHT FEET!
I’d love to try this if I got enough people interested in any given color-- not necessarily enough to use up an entire piece, but at least most of it…
If anyone is seriously interested in a particular color, please e-mail me and I’ll keep a tally and see if I get enough interest to make it worth the expense.
Yikes! Is that the price for 5/8" diameter?
If so, that’s like 3X the price of black!
The minimum order requirement I can kind of understand, but I don’t see how they can justify such a price increase for nothing more than a different color of the exact same material.
That’s 1", which is the smallest they carry. Part of the cost is the fact that it’s “medical grade”, so if you need to perform a blood transfusion with your whistle, this is the stuff to use…
Is that the price for 5/8" diameter?