Hi again
Had a try at my first 6 note whistle today (is that still a whistle?!)… I have to say that it was very shrill and… only worked when I blocked the end with my finger! Can anybody suggest why this might be? It has a 12mm bore and is about 300mm long, although I did drill from both ends using green wood which had a slight bend so there is a slight step inside the tube.
I’m not looking to go in to business but would like to be able to replicate the process in the outdoors,
Thanks
Leo
I am another beginner, but have had similar issues with some resolution. It usually is the angle of the ramp on the fipple block and/or the height of the airway above it. I was scared about getting the edge cut perfectly, but every edge I have cut will sound if I can get enough air aimed the right way.
Right now I am struggling with whistle #6, which has a 3/8" bore. The plugs I have tried so far require so little pressure to get to the second octave that it is hard to play in the first. I suspect that is why yours is shrill. Try blowing very lightly and I bet you hear a tone an octave lower than the shrill one. My big bore whistles (and yes Hans, one is a high D) are much easier to play in the lower octave but sound bad up high.
Anyway, I actually came to post looking for answers myself, so take it with a grain of salt.
I’m not a whistle maker tho I’ve dabbled in tweaking them. You didn’t describe the size, shape or configuration of the blade and window - that’s probably where the main problem lies if there is not recognizable music coming out. A picture of the windway/blade area might get you more help from the membership. You might also search this forum - there have been a number of topics over the years describing how to lay out the windway and blade. That said, the configuration of the blade and windway is only part science; the other part is just trying different things until one setup works.
There are so many variables when designing a whistle… but here are a couple of tips from another amatuer:
Basic window shape and size - especially the distance between the inner edge of your fipple and the bottom of the blown edge. By this I mean the length of the window - approximately 3/16" gives me the best result on both large and narrow bore whistles, but start smaller if you are cutting your blown edge from the same material. This dimension will determine the break between octaves. Also, a narrower window will be quieter, a wider one will be louder. The window needs to create enough of an opening to support the bore of the whistle. A 3/8" cylindrical bore will be best suited to a smaller window.
The relationship between the top of the windway floor and the bottom of the blown edge - they should just about line up, with the bottom of the blown edge being slightly higher than the floor of the windway. The closer to lining up they are, the quieter the whistle (added - and they will require a gentler breath), and there can be a fine line between sounding fuzzy and pure. Leave plenty of material to form the ramp from, and take your time. Despite what some will tell you, angle of the ramp is not that critical in my experience - the ability to let air exit freely without creating excessive turbulence is. A longer, gentler slope allows for easier, smoother exit, but this depends on your material (wall thickness) as well. Sometimetimes the material can be shaved down or pressed down just below the window, and in such cases, you need not have much of a ramp at all - just a slightly beveled edge.
Next - size, shape, and height (or vertical width) of the windway… this will determine backpressure, which in turn will affect the overall sound of the whistle. This is also where you can make or break potential clogging issues. Not every curved windway I have encountered reduces clogging - height, length, and pressure will have a big impact on this issue. For flat windays, I have had much success chamfering the sides of the windway floor, which sort of simulates having an arched windway.
Your blown edge should be straight and parallel with the fipple block or plug. Anything else will likely produce an excessively breathy sounding whistle. Be sure to leave a bit of material at the very edge - you want it to be durable once you get it right - having a knife-sharp edge is unnecessary and will not last. I actually burnish my edges to a bevel by rubbing them with a small piece of titanium welding wire, as one of my final steps. Again, angle is not as critical as height, with respect to that of the floor of the windway.
Hope that helps… there are many other things that will affect timbre and tone - and then of course there are tuning and intonation to be addressed, but these are some basics to get an understanding of and begin to define, in order to be able to consistently produce whistles that will play.
Great! Thanks for the very comprehensive answer, that’s excellent. but raises a few more questions!
When you say small bore do you really mean 3/16"? I didn’t realise they could be that small. Being a complete novice would that need to be a similar length? say over 250mm.
I am also using round wood and wanted to make it out of a single piece (not inclusing the fipple block) so the bottom of the blown edge can only ever really be as low as the internal diameter of the cylinder and therefore the windway floor will always be lower, should I try to angle the windway floor to align slightly below the blown egde to compensate for this?
Better leave it at that…
Ok one more! on my first attempt my first whistle it would only work when I put a finger over the end and blocked it, what might the reason be for this?
Many thanks
Leo
Leo,
That’s not my post but my understanding of it is that the bore size suggested is 3/8" and the window size is 3/16". The window is the hole where the blown edge is.
Thanks Andy, kind of getting brain fuddled there, so 3/8" bore with 3/16" window before the blown edge.
Yes, as small as 3/16". I am still early in this also, with about 8 having made some sound but only 4 of them making pleasing sounds so far (but that is 4 out of the last 5, so I am getting there). My point in the earlier post was that I have found that while getting the window and edge “right” has a significant effect on how loud a whistle is, how much breath it takes to sound and change octaves and causes significant variance in the tone, if you are getting no sound at all then it is usually the flue and/or fipple plug. I have made some whistles with really poorly shaped/sized windows and edges and if I make the flue and fipple plug aim the air at them, they make sound. Not always nice sounds, but sounds. I have one little whistle with a 3/8" bore and a window you could almost poke a finger through. It takes a lot of breath to play it sounds horrid, but it does make a sound. I hang on to some of these early “failures” to give to the children of annoying acquaintances. 
Are you shaping a flue before cutting the window? I just got clued in to a great cheap “tool” for doing this. I took a paint can opener and filed and burnished the edge so it is a scraper with the burr set so it scrapes when pulled. You stick it in the bore, hold it against the top of the bore and pull it out. After a couple of minutes of scraping, you will have a nice clean flue to cut the window into. Then you flatten the top of your fipple plug so you have a tiny rectangular duct aimed at the edge.
EDIT - BTW, you can do this to a whistle you already made and improve it. Just be careful around the window. (yet another edit…) Oh, and you will need a new fipple plug after this of course. I said I have made 8 whistles that made a sound. I have no idea how many fipple plugs I have made, but it is a MUCH bigger number than 8. 
Thanks again Andy!
Can I ask how you are hollowing out the bore of your whistles? Are you a turner?
Most of mine will be given away too I imagine and I think I was quite naive to think I could quickly rise above the one note whistle with ease! I thought ‘how hard can it be?’, ‘one note is easy, how hard could it be to follow the same principles to make an instrument with more longevity’ !!! a lot harder than I thought!!!
I still hold the hope that this could turn in to a camp fire whittling exercise one day! Music made from the finds of the woodland floor!
Leo
Hopefully they won’t always be given away. I actually have a couple of D whistles in progress that might be session worthy when done. They will still be given away to get some feedback, but to people who would actually play them out. Of course, I still have a few chances to screw them up remaining…
Yes, I am a turner. I bore with a combination of bits and equipment. I don’t have a gun drill set up yet and I am not sure I will because I do want to be able to do this on a treadle lathe at shows even though I use a power lathe at home. What I use most is a boring bit with the lead scew ground flat and sharpened like a mini spade bit. This keeps it from cracking blanks but makes it harder to drive through and more prone to wandering, so I start with a smaller very rigid brad point to make a pilot hole. I use a piece of cane with the last segment split to hold sandpaper that I spin inside the bore to clean up.
A lot of my wood is harvested from logs people give away when they cut a yard tree. I have some really nice maple, cherry, mulberry, hackberry and other woods I got this way. I round blanks and seal them to dry. I also use some dimensioned lumber, a lot of it off cuts from other woodworkers.
Hollowing around a campfire would be tough…
Are you sealing the tone tube with some olive or almond oil. There is a lot of mention that wood whistles need to be oiled to preserve the wood. However, the other reason to seal it is to make it air tight. Some of the wood you list here are porous, and will leak enough to lose the air column in the tube. When they leak they sound poor. Before you drill the tone holes wet the tube on the outside, and blow through it with your finger covering the other end. If you see bubbles it is leaking. If you don’t want to wet the wood just blow, and hold a finger on the other end. If it feels like your losing pressure, move the wrist of your other hand along the side of the whistle. A wrist is sensitive, and you will be able to feel very small leaks.
Thanks Andy and Tommy
Really tapped in to a great font of knowledge.
I was being slightly vague with the whittling idea in that I am a green woodworker/underwoodsman and will have more than a knife at my disposal, but the more I learn the more I inclined to agree that this is perhaps more a task for the laboratory (or alchamists lair!) than the woodland floor. However… I will keep pondering and trying, surely there is an instrument more akin to the whistle (made from wood) (and not the NAF) that is simple, and simple because our ancestors didn’t have the technologies that we have to hand?
In response to Tommy’s post and in light of my more rustic agenda I have read somewhere that a watered down PVA can be swilled up and down the bore, allowed to dry and then repeated to both seal the wood and to add to its smoothness. Perhaps not the finish that craftmen like yourselves would be looking for though.
I presume ‘pre’ long reach drills and lamp augers on lathes our ancestors must have used a mix of simple tools to acheive the predecessors of our modern instruments?
Leo
So far I am using just maple and cherry for whistles, but I do plan to do some in the mulberry heartwood; it is a shiny gold color. The sealing I referred to in the earlier post is sealing the ends of blanks while they air dry. For that I use AnchorSeal, a wax emulsion. I have used watered down PVA in the past (I am new to whistles, but not woodworking and harvesting) and it does work reasonably well. Inside the bores I use pure tung oil thinned with terps. Olive oil and almond oil are not drying oils (tung, linseed and walnut are) and will not permanently seal wood. They also can go rancid and be broken down by bacteria. EDIT - I don’t want to make it sound like imminent doom and destruction; when a thin coating of oil on wood goes rancid the smell is almost imperceptable. It’s more a problem of it breaking down and providing less protection.
The most ancient of whistles were made of bone and reed/cane - ready made tubes that did not need boring. A lot of NAF construction is trenching half blanks and gluing them together to form the tube rather than boring.
Picking up wood and whittling, I would think about a free bar instrument; search for “driftwood marimba” to get an idea…
You are correct. I apologize for not being more specific, and should have specified a non food grade of olive or almond oil. I am not sure what process non food grade olive or almond oil goes through but it does not go rancid.
It is usually enough to put a slight bevel on the edge of the plug at the exit of the windway. We recently had a discussion about some of this in another thread which you might find helpful.
https://forums.chiffandfipple.com/t/whistle-making-taming-the-high-b/69728/1
By the way this forum is searchable (link at the upper right of the page). There are a lot of posts concerning whistle design and manufacture. Good luck.
Feadoggie
With all due respect, that isn’t so. “Food grade” costs more because they have to use non toxic solvents in processing, meet some higher standards in handling and storage, etc. They take extra care to make sure it is safe for human consumption. All oils can go rancid except for drying oils that have cured completely. It actually doesn’t even require bacteria; they just speed it up on edible oils. It is the breakdown of the oil. Use your favorite search tool and do a little reading.
EDIT A couple of additional thoughts on the business of sealing the tube when using “porous” woods…
It occurs to me that any leakage will not be very substantial, possibly just affecting hole shaping when you initially tune the instrument. I wuold not use a blnk with an obvious large defect.
I am toying with the idea of epoxy sealing the bore on some interesting pieces of wood that would likely be unusable otherwise. I have some wormy persimmon that would look very nice, for example. I have some cherry that I got from another woodworker that has some really punky sections. I have just been cutting off the really sold stuff, getting a blank here and there and tossing the less stable stuf. Some of it really looks nice though.
Thanks Feadoggie
… have to confess I am completely bamboozled by the terminology used in the link you posted! When you say ‘slight bevel’ on the edge of the plug did you mean the whole plug from inlet to windway?
Leo
Hi
Question for Andy… or anyone else kind enough to advise! Had a stab again today at a wooden whistle. Went out for a walk with my daughter in search of a lovely straight bit of elder. Apart from a six year old who managed to plop her hand in some cow poo it was a great success. Having cleared out the central pith of the elder I then carved the lip and fipple. Obviously I’m not expecting perfection but it is very close to at least working which was reassuring, however it works much better when I put my finger over the end… CHEATING!
Does anyone have a suggestion of the next tweek.
Thanks
Leo
Try moving the fipple closer to the blown edge and see what happens. It sounds like the air is losing focus too quickly before it hits the blown edge, either because the fipple edge and the blown edge are too far apart, or they are not lined up correctly. Another thing to try is to cut a keyway in the end of your fipple so that it fills in the sides of the whistle at the window opening. This will focus more air toward the blown edge, instead of allowing the air to bypass it. By keyway, I mean a 3-sided square notch, or you may also refer to it as a dado.
As to your earlier question…it is possible to angle the windway floor toward the blown edge, and I did this on my early simple whistles. This allows you to focus the airstream more as it exits the windway. However, I have had much better results thinning the top of the airway to achieve this same taper, instead. (thin the material where your breath enters the windway, leave it thicker where it exits, so that the height is narrowed as the air exits) Keeping the windway floor more or less parallel with the blown egde - that is, focusing the airstream to be in the same plane - will give you much better stability, balance, and intonation across both octaves.
Whether you create this vertical taper using the top of the windway or the floor of the windway, you can also improve the focus of the airstream by tapering the sides of the windway toward the blown edge slightly. This is an effective way of creating backpressure.
Another tip from my own experience: I currenty use a parallel windway with a height of .035", or just slightly over 1/32". To do this on your type of whistle, you will likely need to bore the wood out to a slightly larger diameter where the windway is, and use a matching fipple diameter. This will enable you to achieve the alignment between the windway floor and the blown edge. Alternatively, you could reduce the diameter of the bore along the rest of the whistle, but this would be harder to do, and I wouldn’t recommend going smaller than the 3/8" you are using…3/8" is a tad small for a D whistle to begin with, but absolutely possible.
In all honesty, the trick to making a good whistle, is to make a lot of bad whistles. Take notes on each one - what you did differently and what the result was. I keep a log of dimensions in a ring binder. Each page contains everything about each different whistle I have made - average wall thickness, hole sizing and placement, shape of windway, etc. It has proven useful not just for recreating a good whistle, but for salvaging a few that started going awry.
Thanks Avien
Each and every response adds a bit more colour to my problem.
So I sanded the fipple block today and added the final holes… I get a great note out of the first two holes and then it starts to go wrong! I have to blow successively more softly with each hole further away from the windway, like a soft breath for the last! Furthermore I had a strange resistance a few times too, almost like a blockage, but there wasn’t.
Ps I did use a keyway on this one.
Something immensly satisfying about cutting your own piece of wood and literally a few hours later making a few notes… understandably quite awful notes! but hopefully that will change. Elder is proving ideal, once its pith is hollowed out a natural bore is revealed, but this does lead to problems; no two bores will be the same and therefore there are some variables that I can not account for, another would be the wall thickness…
My reasons for persuing this method (some where else someone suggested I forget it and make a driftwood xylophone!) are that we work with mental health patients on a variety of green woodworking and primitive skills and this would be another fnatastic project for people to have a go at… I think my initial thoughts might have been a little niave and a little romantic but if I can do it I’m sure we can pass the knowledge on!
Thanks again
Leo