Okay, I’ve got dimensions etc. I’m trying to carve out a fipple with wood chisels. This is the first time I’ve ever used a wood chisel, and the finished product keeps coming out jagged. The wood I’m using might be too soft…I’m using pine for practice.
Any tips on how to make clean cuts?
Thanks!
For materials, I’d steer away from pine; it’s hard to control for fine work. Basswood (a.k.a. Tilia or Lime) is a better bet, but if you want more precision, I’d suggest fruitwoods like apple, pear, or plum.
Other than that, sharp, well-honed tools would of course be a must.
I’ve never carved fipples or fipple plugs, so I’m afraid that the above is as far as I can go with advice.
Good luck!
Fipples are usually brought down to the desired diameter by turning them on a lathe. Other methods can be used when you don’t have a lathe handy. You can turn a dowel down to size by turning it in a drill (clamp a hand drill down to a bench) and wrap a piece of sand paper around it. Be patient and keep the paper moving. A drill press works too.
If your diameter is a common one (you wouldn’t be chiseling if it were, I’d guess) you can find a plug cutter and cut one with a hand drill or drill press.
You also don’t have to limit yourself to wooden plugs. You can cast a plug from epoxy or polyester resins. You can mold one out of poly clays such as Fimo or Sculpey.
This is a subject that comes up regularly so doing a search of the board will turn up quite a few descriptions oh how others have solved the same problem.
Good luck. Let us know what turns out.
Feadoggie
I tend to work with coarse, simple fipples. I don’t need to carve mine. It sounds like you’re making an internal piece for a wooden or metal whistle.
A chisel sounds like the wrong sort of tool to use - even if you’re working with a vice/vice. I’d suggest a woodcarving set - I picked mine up for about five pounds sterling from my local craft shop - they shouldn’t cost more than ten dollars US. I tend to use my swiss army knife for wood detail - but the wood-carving knives are there for when they are needed.
I endorse Nano’s observation about the wood. Pine splinters and shears so easily. Hardwood is better, and a fruitwood sounds ideal.
I wonder if the OP is referring to “fipple” in the strictest sense of the block or plug that forms the windway, or the looser sense of the entire array of block, windway, window, and blade?
Good question! I considered that. I’m just not the kind of guy that gets loose with his fipples.
Feadoggie
mind reading is so difficult sometimes 
Right you are. Daniel’s playing loose with the terminology in his diagram, IMHO. As a certified old f&rt, I can’t go there.
Fip⋅ple [fip-uhl] –noun Music.
a plug stopping the upper end of a pipe, as a recorder or a whistle, and having a narrow slit through which the player blows.
Origin:
1620–30; perh. special use of dial. fipple loose lower lip, pouting lip; cf. ON flipi lower lip of a horse, Norw flipe flap, lappet.
Feadoggie
I try to stick to flute…
stick w/holes
takes a long time to become an old fart
plenty of opportunity for failure
I have no idea how I managed it myself
Life is a strange old duck.
-Hank Stovie-
Another interesting polyclay resource is “Liquid Sculpey”. Just make yourself a form, pour the material out and bake it.
I just spent twenty minutes pondering those lines and am still finding things to ponder. How DID you spend the 60s?
finished the k-12 thing
turned 18
left Ohio
ended up in California
bought a motorcycle
an’ yerself? 
Pretty much the same:
Finished k-12
Turned 18
Left South Carolina
Went to Colorado
Learned to fly airplanes
sorry about Texas
when did it start to go wrong?
Same way as usual - marriage.
ah, I moved first 
married one from upstate NY 
Actually, I rather like Texas. Only drawback so far is Irish music sessions are few and far between.
I just looked up Burkburnett…
yer barely in Texas and nowhere near a metropolis…
I can generally live without metro but it doesn’t help findin’ live music.
We actually have lots of live music: country, red dirt, bluegrass, western swing, more country, church music out the wazoo - just no Irish. We even have a local jazz ensemble that’s pretty good. Dallas has Irish sessions but that’s 3 hours, one-way.
Burkburnett has 10,000 souls and two stop lights. Gridlock here is three cars at a 4-way stop trying to figure out who has the right-of-way. About the only thing people steal is some shut-eye. Small town life has lots of advantages, not the least of which is low blood pressure.
I remember driving from Ft Worth to somewhere in Kansas one night in December of ‘69. It quit raining when we hit the Oklahoma line…snowin’ too damn hard.
Oh, yeah…Dallas is too far & I’d noticed that it wasn’t densely populated.