I was wondering if anyone knew of any good tutorials on how to craft WOODEN penny whistles that are online? I have a shop class this year and have to decide on some wood working projects, and I thought that penny whistles might be something interesting to try. I’ve looked around, but thus far I’ve only found tutorials on making METAL penny whistles.
I’m required to purchase all of the wood needed for my projects, and concidering the size of a whistle, I thought they might also be a frugal choice concidering they’re a good bit of fun to play and relatively small.
Also, would it be possible to use a tutorial for making a PVC penny whistle and exchange the PVC for wood and get a whistle that is still on key? I’ve been looking at this tutorial: http://www.ggwhistles.com/howto/ and wondering if it could be worked in wood and still be in tune with the specific scale? Then, would it matter what TYPE of wood was used? I know a lot of wood whistles are made of blackwood, but I’ve seen them made in Maple… could you be just as successful using oak, or even wooden dowels?
There is one “tutorial” on making a wooden whistle that was written by Glann Schultz maker of Thin Weasel snd Water Weasel whistles, may he… It was published in “Woodwind Quarterly” back in 1996. While that article is a good one it is in no way an illustrated step-by-step instruction set with plans and a DVD. I know of no such thing being available (though I have had thoughts of making one). Glenn’s article was good enough to get me going making whistles though. I’d still recommend it. It is available as a reprint from the publisher here: http://www.musictrader.com/wwqindex.html#8
If you want to see the steps you go through to make a whistle here’s a maker that shows how he goes about things. Look here:http://theflutemaker.com/tutorials.php
Yes, I use the same designs for both CPVC and wooden whistles in some keys. I would also suggest that you should get your feet wet making whistles in CPVC or some such material. You will have waste and CPVC grows faster than African Blackwood trees (let’s not get technical here, ok!). Get things right in plastic or aluminum before you have shot at exotic woods or even furniture woods. I like Guido Gonzato’s low tech whistle site. It’s a terrific resource. You would have to make a wood tube with a thickness less than 2mm to make a wooden whistle according to GG’s high D plans. Not easy! So you’ll probably have to adjust some measurements. You can do that or start from scratch using a whistle design calculator like TWCalc from Daniel Bingamon who is a long time member here. http://www.kingsmills.us/twcalc/twcalc.htm
It’s not really hard to start from your own design. And reality rarely matches the physics in these calculators so be prepared to make a few whistles some adjustments before you get things right. It’s a fun process.
As for woods, you can use domestic furniture woods or exotics. Oak is not the best idea, IMO. I have used maple, cherry and walnut among the domestic varieties. If you select maple it should be hard maple. Walnut is nice. You could try that for a few whistles until you get things dialed in. Furniture grade woods tend to be less dimensionally stable than the heavy, dense, oil filled exotic woods. ABW is used historically because it has good stability and works so well with machine tools. Many other exotic woods work as well and are more available and less expensive. Honduran rosewood is a nice place to start, IMO.
If you are making a high D start with either a 1" x 1" x 12" turning square or similar dowel. eBay has several suppliers that offer stock in those dimensions for low volumes. Woodcraft and other retail woodworking hobby stores carry a variety of turning stock too although the prices can be stiff depending on the wood you select.
Sounds simple-- start with a PVC plan and just substitute wood.
The problem is that the biggest part of making a wooden whistle by FAR is the turning of a square stick of wood into a wooden tube with walls about 1/16" thick. This requires a precision metal lathe, special boring drills for drilling blind, deep holes (7" or more), etc.
Not to discourage you, but this is not a casual undertaking. You (or anyone else)are welcome to visit my shop any time if you’re near the upstate NY area to see what I mean.
Thankyou for the wealth of information! I’ll have to see if my teacher is fine with working in PVC isntead of wood, though I don’t think he would have a problem with it since it isn’t specificly a wood working class, but rather a manufacturing/shop class. I’ll be sure to head over to ebay and do a little research on the wood types you’ve mentioned. I had mentioned oak because I have a small bit of unused solid oak flooring laying about that could stand to be used up, as well as access to fresh oak wood by the limb/twig. I understand that different woods have different oil contents, densities, etc. that effect the sound quality of musical instruments made from them, is there any distinct cons to oak? I would love to make my own whistle plans, but I fear I’m far from an experience player, and wouldn’t know the first place to start on positioning the key holes I’ll be sure to look over the resources you’ve suggested, though, they sound fascinating.
As for the complications of turning the wood into a dowel and then hollowing it, the class shop has a “lathe”, or atleast I believe it is the same machine as you referred to (used to turn square, blocked wood into round dowels) as well as a plethora of drills.
I agree, though, that PVC seems like a more sound options for the inexperienced (one thing, which, admittedly I am) but I find its always good to explore ones options thanks
Oak is a wood with rather open grain and it will absorb moisture easily and change shape unless it is sealed very well. Ideally you would like to have a glass-smooth bore inside your whistle and the grain in the oak will raise when you treat it so you would have to spend a fair amount of time on getting the bore nice. Dense woods with tighter more uniform grain will give you a good smooth bore with less effort provided you have done the work with proper tools to start.
The lathe Paul mentioned is a metal working lathe sometimes referred to as an engineering lathe. The lathe found in most shop classes would be a woodturning lathe. One big difference between those two types of lathes is that the metal lathe secures the cutting tool in a post that moves mechanically down the work piece being turned whereas the tools are handheld in the woodworking lathe. You can do the job on a wood turning lathe but precision would take great skill. If we assumed as Paul said that you’d want a tube with a wall diameter of 1/16" you can see that there is little to no room for errors there. I actually use both types of lathes - the wood lathe for roughing out the blanks and the metal lathe for the rest of the turning. The metal lathe is especially useful in turning seats for the rings and the mouthpiece and for boring the inside recesses for the tuning slides. You can make a whistle in a fashion more like a recorder and skip the rings and thin-walled metal tuning slide and do the work fine on a wood lathe. Here’s a video that outlines that process. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiSW6LPchSc
When we talk about drilling the bore of the whistle you have a few choices. Some are pretty specialized and not likely to be found in a shop class. You can of course use an auger or spoon drill to make the hole. Here’s a site which illustrates construction of a flute that is initially bored in that manner. http://users.skynet.be/fluiten/how.html If you take that path you might quickly discover that your hole rarely goes through the center of your wood blank. You could start with a thicker blank, right? But the drill that stays on center best is a gundrill like those used to drill the bores of firearms, just as the name suggests. That’s what is used by the whistle makier in the photos at the site I referenced in my last post. You probably don’t have a set-up like that in your school shop.
Anyway, don’t be discouraged. The best advice I can give you is to have a go at it with whatever tools you have available just think things through before you make your cuts.
And if the whistle doesn’t work out, how about making a tongue drum, marimba or mbira?
Hmmm, i’d kill for any kind of lathe, just to make those damn fipple plugs.
Beside that, all that a beginner needs is a decent vice, drill and a hacksaw. Just as Guido said in his tutorial. And you can make some pretty awesome whistles, once you get into minutiae of the whistlemaking (with a little help from Chiff&Fipple crowd).
There’s no need to consider homicide! Dain, there is an easy solution to making plugs if you are making whistles from any manufactured tube. You just cut an appropriately short piece of the tube and use it as a mold for casting the plug in something like acrylic resin which is available at most hobby/craft shops. Cover one end with something like cling-wrap and a rubber band to hold in the liquid resin. Make sure the cling-wrap is flat and smooth so that the end of the plug will end up smooth. Just make sure you coat the inside of the mold with a thin layer of some release agent and that the inside edges of the tube are de-burred and clean before you pour the resin. That way the plugs will just pop out once the resin has hardened. And they will be the perfect diameter. You can experiment with wild colors or embedding fun objects into translucent plugs too.
Wow, Feadoggie, this bit of info is almost enough to make me break out the whistle making stuff again. The guaranteed-to-fit fipple plug maker … cool! Just to have the information on file, what “release agent” do you use? Wonder if the kitchen no-stick stuff like “Pam” would work?
The type I use is a creamy wax. I coat the molds using a q-tip. There are lots of commercial release agents and most stores that sell casting resins will have some type of spray or wax available with the resin. Pam could work but I’m not a chemist. You just need something which will not react with the catalyzed resin that also prevents the resin from sticking to the mold material. By the way polymer clays can also work to mold plugs. In fact poly-clays are PVC just like plumbing pipe. But the casting resin is much easier, IMO.
Hmmmmm, the only thing is that i’m very far away from America’s brands and i have no clue what to buy. As i have seen, most of the resins sold here (in Serbia) are some kind of lacquers or finishes (used for floors, boat hulls and such). Another issue is that i have no idea are those things hazardous, as i would have to fumble them in my mouth and i assure you that nobody here take such health issues into consideration when making epoxy resins.
I tried with that modeling clay (FIMO) but the results weren’t satisfying.
Make whistle plugs, and soup spoons of wood. Wood has been used for thousands of years before chemicals.
Everyone has a Grandma with a wood soup stir spoon.
Funny you said that, i used the tip of my granny’s broomstick for one plug.
I don’t like working with wood, it’s too fiddly when comes to shaping it into the right diameter, without proper tools.
Well, you are right to be cautious with any material you are working with. It’s a good idea to look through product safety sheets before you work with any exotic material and take the proper precautions. Work safe! I am using acrylic casting resins and not epoxy resins. Dain, you mentioned Fimo. Acrylic casting resin is sold in the same arts and crafts shops here in the US that would sell Fimo or other poly-clays. I work with small quantities in a well ventilated area. I let the plugs cure in the molds for a long time before I use them. They shouldn’t be hazardous after the resin has fully cured. And there is no point in sticking an uncured plug in a whistle and then your mouth until after the plastic has hardened and cured for some time. Patience is a virtue.
As for Fimo (or Sculpey), it does require some trial and error before you get to a good result, at least it did in my case. The poly-clay has to be well packed into the mold first off. And if you can make a ram or piston that fits into a mold to pack the Fimo, then you probably can probably make a plug out of wood, right? Getting the Fimo thoroughly cured may take several test efforts. Small plugs (high D) work best. But when you get the process right, it works like it is solid PVC rod,. And you have a huge variety of colors and combination from which to choose.
Just thinking about your concern in general though, there are a lot of things to be concerned about in whistle making materials. Many plastics like polycarbonate and some epoxies are produced from bisphenol A or BPA which has recently had a lot of attention in the press for its use in baby bottles and water bottles. PVC/CPVC can off-gas chlorine when heated but it’s been used safely as water pipe other applications for decades. Some people are really concerned about the health risks of aluminum. And wood, especially exotic varieties can cause nasty allergic responses in many individuals. So what’s my point? No point!
I have tried with our domestic variety of FIMO, but, as you said it’s trial and error and the damned stuff is pretty expensive for me. I tried to cast it out of the tubing (with a kind of piston-action as you suggested), but it wasn’t packed enough, releasing agent (plain water) wasn’t very effective as the leading end of the rod squeezed all of it out, it was to soft for some reason, and in the end, when i baked it, it was brittle and could easily be scraped and scratched.
Now, i’m gathering courage to try it with the original FIMO mass, but with a different approach: i will pack it into a aluminium mold, but i won’t release it, but rather cook it up while inside. Do you think it’s a good idea? Would i be able to take it out? I’ve read that it could be boiled as well as baked, but i don’t know for how long.
Before I started making wooden whistles, I dabbled in copper pipe whistles. I didn’t have a lathe at the time, so I molded plugs from epoxy putty. It comes in two separate rolls-- you cut off equal amounts and knead them together. I greased the inside of the pipe with vaseline which worked well as an anti-stick agent.
I’ll be sure to look over the resources you’ve suggested, though, they sound fascinating.
thanks
Dain, there is an easy solution to making plugs if you are making whistles from any manufactured tube. You just cut an appropriately short piece of the tube and use it as a mold for casting the plug in something like acrylic resin which is available at most hobby/craft shops. Cover one end with something like cling-wrap and a rubber band to hold in the liquid resin. Make sure the cling-wrap is flat and smooth so that the end of the plug will end up smooth. Just make sure you coat the inside of the mold with a thin layer of some release agent and that the inside edges of the tube are de-burred and clean before you pour the resin. That way the plugs will just pop out once the resin has hardened. And they will be the perfect diameter. You can experiment with wild colors or embedding fun objects into translucent plugs too.
