New from O’Brien Whistles is the wooden Rover- a three piece pocket whistle made of purpleheart, Delrin and brass. It is quite loud with a pure tone. I’m offering it for a limited time at only C$135 (about US$120), which includes a woolen case and shipping.
More pictures and a sound sample are here:
http://www.obrienwhistles.com/OBPWwoodrover.html
African blackwood:
Looks like a nice whistle 
Nice work! Purpleheart is very cool wood, isn’t it?
I like the hole-through-the-slide thing 
forgive me if this is an ignorant question, but wouldn’t that increase the possibility of cracking the wood in the foot joint?
It should be alright- the bottom section of the joint is lined with brass.
Just a suggestion, but I’d recommend seriously considering adding external bands to all of the sections where the tuning/coupling slides are located. Yes, the interior is lined with brass on all sides, but there is still a significant risk of damage to those sections - both from internal pressure/ external trauma, as well as the risk that, over time, cracks will develop externally due to wood shrinkage - a wide band is best at preventing/arresting this.
Loren
(edited due to a typo regading which sections I suggest banding)
Loren,
Thanks a lot for the suggestion- I considered it, but decided that I like the look of continuous purpleheart from top to bottom.
I’ll put bands on the next one and post pictures on my website. Then my customers can have their preference. Of course, bands or not, all whistles I sell are covered by my guarantee.
Just a question about the purpleheart. I’ve made a few items from it, particularly escrima sticks and nunchaku, and I note that if my hands get sweaty while I’m practicing, they come out stained red from the wood. Do you do any coating or impregnation to stabilize the stuff?
Just curious - I’d like to find a process other than lacquer that would do so.
thanx,
Bill Whedon
[quote=“Loren”]Just a suggestion, but I’d recommend seriously considering adding external bands to all of the sections where the tuning/coupling slides are located. Yes, the interior is lined with brass on all sides, but there is still a significant risk of damage to those sections - both from internal pressure/ external trauma, as well as the risk that, over time, cracks will develop externally due to wood shrinkage - a wide band is best at preventing/arresting this.
Loren
quote]
Good point Loren. Are your whistles bored out to accomodate the brass tubing? If so, the wood over the tuning slides is probably quite thin and although the brass won’t crack, the wood over it can if it shrinks. I agree that the look of plain purpleheart is terrific,but you might be asking for trouble.
The whistle has a 0.5 inch bore and at the joints, I widened it a little to accommodate the brass, which has a wall thickness of 1/64". If you check the photos on my website, you can see that the wood on the outside of the brass is still fairly thick. This piece of purpleheart, which is big enough for a few whistles, has been sitting around for over thirty years, so I think it’s very unlikely to crack.
Paul- how do you finish purpleheart? Oil or lacquer? Do you notice the finger staining that Bill mentioned?
Polyeurathane or Spar Varnish will do it, and extend the sticks life significanlty, however the down side is that your skin sticks to the sticks, and you just lose skin like crazy as you manipulate them.
You’re really best off sticking with the traditional Fire Hardened Rattan, or if you need heavy, some nice pieces of well sanded Ironwood. However few people have the wrist tendon, and ligament strength to deal with whipping such heavy sticks around for any length of time.
Loren (28 years Kali/Escrima/Arnis experience, 26 years teaching.)
With regards to cracking: At least as important as how old the wood is, and at what humidity level it has been seasoning at, is the issue of how long the wood seasoned after boring. Then how long did the wood season between the time the instrument is final turned/first reamedreamed, and the final reaming and fitting of the internal and external sleeves. If all of this is done with relatively little time between steps, then a hundred years of aging is little proof against cracks.
But then this all fall under the category of (In the SNL Hanz and Franz faux Swarzenegger voices “Hear me now und Believe me Later”
Loren
[quote="Loren
With regards to cracking: At least as important as how old the wood is, and at what humidity level it has been seasoning at, is the issue of how long the wood seasoned after boring. Then how long did the wood season between the time the instrument is final turned/first reamedreamed, and the final reaming and fitting of the internal and external sleeves. If all of this is done with relatively little time between steps, then a hundred years of aging is little proof against cracks.
Loren[/quote]
With Loren’s previous instrument making experience, this is something to take to heart!
On the (slight)other hand, the walls of a whistle are generally much thinner than the thick turnings of a Baroque recorder, so they seem to equilibrate faster after boring.
For finishing Purpleheart I use the same as on most of my other woods: sanding sealer followed by a variation on the old French Polish:
http://www.woodcraft.com/family.aspx?FamilyID=7242
This is applied to the wood while it spins on the lathe and forms a nice durable finish.
I’ve been using several applications of pure tung oil. In the pure form (hard to find) it’s food safe. It penetrates and hardens, stabilizing the wood. It also smells good!
I had never seen your site before this Dave, but I’ll say you make a fine whistle based on appearance. I think I’ll order a D once my summer money starts coming in.
What is a fair amount of time inbetween each step?
I don’t build wooden whistles, but from years of cabinetmaking, I do know that wood will crack when stored under adverse conditions. But the major factor in whether or not a given piece of lumber will split down the grain is much more closely related to the part of the tree it came from, and lumbermaking methods, than simple storage and working humidity. Most rounds are stored and aged with wax coating the endgrain so that moisture exits through the pulpwood. Unless the tree has been standing deadwood a long time in adverse weather conditions, the heartwood is usually pretty low in moisture. probably one of the best friends of the woodworker who wants wood to last once milled, is a moisture meter, available from a number of sources. It’s a sort of hygrometer specific to wood, and measures the resistance between a couple points stuck into the endgrain (usually).
Quartersawn heartwood rarely splits beyond initial relief checking, no matter what the milling treatment. I have a eucalyptus carpenter’s maul that I turned from a billet quartersawn from a freshly-fallen tree in Gilroy, CA in 1990. It’s been stored under every sort of temperature and humidity imaginable, and has yet to develop a single check that wasn’t in it at first. albeit eucalyptus is an oily wood and hell to smell while being worked (also the swarf breaks me out), still storage in the trunk of a car for about a year in all sorts of weather, followed by storage in a damp cellar for another year, did nothing to destabilize it.
There are also some polymers that can be introduced into woods by capillary action when the wood is heated, that will lock in the fibers and stabilize the stuff. Again, a kind of a cheat, and not very much fun to do (the fumes are just plain nasty). However, if you want wood that will never crack pretty much no matter what, short of bashing it with a mallet, that’s a way to get it.
examine the growth rings in the endgrain, and when you’re ripping the whistle stock, try to cut as near to quartersawing as possible, and you will likely have few to no problems regardless of the timing of the milling process.
here is a good article on wood moisture measurement, and all of the factors that affect stability: http://www.ces.purdue.edu/extmedia/FNR/FNR-156.html
Enjoy!
Bill Whedon
(who doesn’t make wooden whistles!)[/url]
Keep in mind Paul that the tenons on something like a Soprano Recorder, or even (gasp!) a sopranino, are pretty thin, and also that we made relatively thin walled Ren Recorders with brass tuning slides and external bands - so the wood between the slides and bands was quite thing, just like on whistles.
Just for kicks, you should try a little experiment: Turn, bore and ream a few tubes from several different woods. Let them sit for a month, then re-ream and note how much wood is removed. Let them sit 3 more months, and do the same. Then repeat until an entire year has passed between the final reaming and the first reaming. I think you’ll be surprised to see how much the wood moves over the course of a year, and how much it fluctuates with the seasons. Also how much variation there is in the shrinkage/expansion with different woods.
Loren
I’ll get stoned to death by all the other makers if I give the number of months that i think is best! 
You should have stopped right there Bill.
Loren