Dear people,
I recently did an experiment in a different material for the body of a whistle, Pyrex glass. I was inspired by the glass flutes I’ve seen for sale at some of the same places I’ve seen pennywhistles for sale. I used the fipple from a Feadog and 13 mm tubing from the U of Idaho chem. stores. I could not find a glass tube cutter, so I used a corundum rod hacksaw blade to do the initial cutting and coarse emery cloth to smooth the ends. I found a tube of 260 mm had a D that could be brought into tune on the fundamental and octave with the proper breath control. Using the corundum blade to make shallow cuts across the tube, I found I could make the tone holes in a reasonably controlled manner. I tried to use glass bits in a drill press running at its lowest RPMs and padded with rubber gasket material, but only managed to crush the tube after little progress in making any holes. Perhaps a good motor speed control would help. After getting the holes placed on the tube, I fire polished the holes and the far end of the tube without doing any damage to the tuning of the instrument with a propane torch. The holes didn’t loose all the roughness, and I ended up bending the tube upward slightly when I held the holes face down over the flame! The upper octave was a bit flat relative to the first octave, but I tuned them such that I could get both octaves in tune with good breath control. I think the fact the glass tube has a smaller internal diameter than the brass body the whistle came with is part of the problem, that and I haven’t figured out a practical way to put a “Boehm taper” by the fipple with the tools I have on hand. The instrument sounds nice, with the overtones de-emphasized for a very flute like sound. It is a good qualified success, as it will be in tune if you remember to “ride” it and not take your intonation for granted. I will continue to experiment with glass and will mention any future experiments as I try to refine the glass whistle.
Regards,
Rod Sprague.
Hey Rod, that sounds like a very interesting experiment. I have a Hall Crystal (pyrex) Flute that sounds wonderful…when somebody besides me plays it. I stink at it, but everyday I work on it a little. Anyway, I’m not learned in the ways of whistle making, but would definately like for you to keep us posted.
Good luck!
Eric
Rod - sounds amazing! Maybe you could do a perspex (translucent) fipple at some stage - it would be a totally see-through whistle!
Wow! That sounds so interesting! I have wondered why Hall doesn’t make whistles; it just seems to me that glass would be a fine material. Glass (even pyrex) has an almost mystical quality to me anyway, so if you find a way to be make a successful one, let me know and I will be first in the buyers’ line, particularly if you can make a transparent fipple 
Have you checked to see if there are any patents for glass whistles? Maybe you can be the first!
I’ve been in contact with Hall about just this very thing. If you do a search, you’ll see my posts and Hall’s response.
I think its great that people are trying to come up with a glass whistle, and hope that someone will offer one to try, or buy!
Rod
Do you have a picture you could post of the finished project? Some of us here have wanted Hall to make whistles for so long now that just a glimpse of the possibility would be exciting.
Hello, everyone,
One of the things I am thinking in terms of is a completely glass whistle. An issue, though, is the safety of having something glass in the mouth! In retrospect, that is no more dangerous than a drinking glass, in less you or your friends get too rowdy during sessions. Of course properly tempered glass would be almost indestructible. The only real issue preventing me from making glass whistles for sale is the lack money to get the equipment to actually make the damned things.
According to Bart Hopkin, author of Musical Instrument Design, the least resonant glass is Pyrex, and the most resonant is fused quartz. I’ve already found a source of quartz tubing in the right sizes on the Internet. According to Hopkin, leaded glass is the second most resonant. It is used to make neon tubing, as well as fine crystal, but the lead content is a safety issue. Glass companies have developed alternative formulations that have the same low melting point as leaded glass, but that don’t have the problem of possibly giving the sign workers heavy metal poisoning. The virtue of using the same low melting point glasses as neon sign workers is that they have the lowest melting points of all the readily available glass tubings, and can be blown on burners that don’t need compressed oxygen to get to the high temperatures needed to easily work most other glasses.
As far as fipple and mouthpiece materials go, wood much like on the Rayburn whistles, might actually sound better than glass. All glass may be good too, simply for a different sound and the novelty of an all glass whistle. So as to get things rolling, and to build up funds to put into better equipment for making things like glass and wooden mouthpieces, I may make and sell glass bodied whistles with the better available plastic mouthpieces.
I’m sorry to say that I can’t show off my glass whistle right now, as I don’t have a working scanner.
I did overstate the intonation problems a bit, as the sound is unusual enough to make the effort of playing it in tune worthwhile and I am interested in making web pages on how to build my present or a more refined design, along the lines of the Bloody Hand Whistle Plans.
Regards,
Rod.
Would it be possible to get a Hall fife, cut off the mouthpiece, and add a whistle head? They’ve got the same hole placement, right? Obviously, this wouldn’t be as neat as a made-from-scratch glass whistle, but maybe it could be interesting.
It could be a pretty expensive experiment. Cutting glass always includes some breakage risk, and risking a $3-4 piece of glass tubing is a whole lot different from cutting a $100+ glass flute.
Dear Caru,
I can see a problem with the “Boehm taper” interfering with getting the whistle mouthpiece on and then not matching with the acoustics of the mouthpiece. Also, getting the aperture on the whistle mouthpiece to be the correct distance from the tone holes and far end of the tube could be a problem. To compensate for the fact the upper octave on a flute or whistle tends to be flat if a purely cylindrical bore is used, instrument makers often put a taper that starts 1 5th the distance from the blowhole or aperture to the far end of the instrument, and that tapers 10% inward in diameter at the blowhole or aperture; the “Boehm taper” that Hall flutes have. Also, cutting up a flute costing over $50 to make an experimental whistle with the strong possibility that trying to cut it could shatter the bore, and that the resulting whistle may not work well, might put someone off. I don’t want to discourage experimentation; I just want to warn you of the problems I think you just might come across.
Regards,
Rod.
Dear people,
My glass whistle broke at the tone hole. I need to do more experimentation on the design, any way.
Regards,
Rod.
RIP to the wee whistle 
You don’t need a boehm taper to get the octaves in tune, you just need to adjust the height of your back-channel, that is to say, the amount of space behind the window in the mouthpiece. The extra length affects the lower octave more than the upper octave… uhm, or vice versa. I may not be much of an instrument maker yet, but I’ve picked up -that- much in my visits to the library. Maybe make a custom mouthpiece with an adjustable fipple plug to experiment?
A conical bore so should help evenness of intonation and getting the cross-fingerings into tune, but I’m not clear on how exactly.
(Oh, bother, I just realized I forgot to check for Benade while I was at the library today… sigh… tomorrow, then…)
–Chris
Rod,
I’m astounded that someone else has actually tried it. I made a whistle nearly a year ago from fused silica (quartz). The trck to drilling that I found was A: temperature, cool the drill head w/ a constant flow of water, and B: Twist Drill bits are fine for wood, but a ball end-mill works better in this case, since you want to grind the glass away not tear through it. Alternitively I’ve been thinking that I oculd bore through w/ a sandblaster w/ a carbide tip like the particle beams used by dentists.
I also hand made the mouthpiece from PVC and a wooden fipple plug. It sounds brilliant in the lower octave, unfortunately I messed up the second octave w/ my hole placement. It’s not out of tune It’s just way too breathy.
Everybody digs the way it looks with one caveat. If you thought it was gross flicking the moisture out in a session, wait until you actually have to watch it build up.
Rod-
That sounds completely awesome! Keep at it until you make the perfect whistle, and who knows? You could be the next Michael Copeland!
-Ross
-If you were to start a business, I would so gewt one!
If your design requires a Boehm type taper, you should look into the Sandner spike - a protrusion in the bore that replaces the taper. Go to yahoogroups.com and join the flute-tech discussion group and there’s plenty of stuff about it in their library.
Dear people,
Sean, I didn’t know anyone else had tried to make a glass whistle, either. How did it sound? I was thinking about using quartz glass, also. I even found a good source of tubing. Another approach that might get a very similar sound would be to make whistles from ceramic. I’ve seen plans for a shakuhachi flute made using the slip casting technique; where clay is introduced as a thin slurry into a plaster mold that absorbs the water, pulling the clay onto the inside of the mold as a thin layer. The somewhat damp clay is then worked to add the tone holes and mouthpiece before being fired. Small Parts, http://www.smallparts.com, has a lot of useful tools and materials that I want to try making whistles with. They have two different ceramic powders that mixed with water and air-dried make true hard ceramics that don?t need to be fired. Small Parts also has many different metal round bars and tubings, including titanium! They also have an “air-abrasive device” that is basically a sand blaster with a nozzle that can be held like a pen and used to make holes in and otherwise work hard materials like glass. As far as being able to put holes in glass, I’ve found out, as Sean knows, I may have better luck using a lubricant-coolant such as water or turpentine on my corundum glass bits. I’ve also studied up a bit more on working glass using heat. I should use a flame that burns hotter using an oxidizer other than air, especially if I want to work quartz glass. Small Parts also has small gas welding and brazing torches that should do the trick. Also, I need to figure out how to anneal the glass; that is, how to keep it at a hot enough uniform temperature to remove thermal stress and let it cool gradually enough to not introduce new thermal stresses into the glass, so it is less likely to break.
You know that it’s a Northwest thing. There’s too many glass blowers here not to try it.
So in the clay slurry I wonder how much shrinkage occurs during firing and if it affects the overall sound. I would assume that if the shrinkage is uniform the whistle would be in tune w/ itself but not to concert. I also tried some rather odd materials, a friend of mine is a big rock hound and gave me a few large pieces of petrified wood which I still think could work, but I couldn’t drill through them all he way as there were too many quartz veins in them and they kept shattering. Maybe if I slowed down the machine head… Anyway, the ceramic idea sounds superb, I mean they make Ocarinas that sound pretty well in tune why not a whistle, w/ maybe a nice green marble and walnut fipple mouthpiece, hmmmm.
Flutes are the instruments of the Angels
Whistles are chosen of Free Will
[ This Message was edited by: Sean on 2002-05-30 11:58 ]
I just got odd ideas from your experiment of making a whistle out of rock. Make a whistle out of obsidian, then it is both a glass and a rock whistle. Also, using the same temperatures used to blow quartz glass, you could work obsidian or volcanic ash like quartz glass. Actually, many quartz-based rocks could be worked that way. Lark in the Morning, http://www.larkinam.com/MenComNet/Business/Retail/Larknet/larkhp.html has Italian stone flutes that look like they are made from soapstone and Chinese jade flutes, as well as “crystal” Pyrex flutes, so I know that those materials can be used to make whistle-like instruments. We hold a Renaissance fair in Moscow Idaho every year, and I’ve seen flutes made of clay there. I asked the person about how she tuned them and she told me that it is possible to make them a bit too low and to grind off a bit from the end and sand the holes to bring them up to pitch after they have been fired, but that for her purposes, the change in pitch wasn’t large enough to be a problem, so she tuned them before firing when they were easier to work. If they get glazed after being fired the first time, I think it would then be an issue of simply making sure not to get glaze into the holes or inside the instrument and not to fire the glaze at a high enough temperature to shrink the clay more.
I wonder how this is going? A crystal whistle sounds interesting. I don’t know if I’d ever have the courage to play it out in public. My regular old Feadóg draws more attention than I’m completely comfortable with. Not that it stops me…
Kim