Hi folks.My name is James and I live in Nashville.I’ve only been playing the whistle for about a year so I’m still a beginner,but I love it.I have some electrical metal tubing,about eight feet long,and five eighths of an inch in diameter.I was wondering if it would be good material to make pennywhistles out of? And if so,where could I find some instructions on how to make one? Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.Thanks.
Hi, James. I think you’re the one Franko sent to me for whistle advice. I think if you want to make a ‘d’ whistle, half-inch tubing is better than 5/8-inch. But 5/8-inch would work for a lower pitch. Also, making a whistle is harder than you might think. Let me know if you’d like to see some of my failed attempts.
Jessie
Hi James,
Some good info on whistle making on the Net… this one will get you started: http://www.geocities.com/dwisely/bloodyhand.htm
Good luck! Feel free to email me for more links if you need them. I have started making whistles recently and there certainly is more to it than one might think. My suggestion is to make a body first, and attatch a pre-made fipple (such as the Sweetone C) to get your feet wet, then later on try making one - fipple and all. One more suggestion: Get a proper tuner. HAVE FUN!
Thom Larsen’s The](http://www.thewhistleshop.com/%22%3EThe) Whistle Shop sells Susato, Walton’s, and Howard fipples without bodies, too. Someone in another thread mentioned that he’d had some success with the Waltons.
- -Rich
Last week I helped my 9 year-old son make a D whistle from a piece of copper tubing and a Sweetone fipple using the Bloody Hand template. It would have worked perfectly had PaintShop Pro not decided to scale the template to fit the page! We ended up with about a Bb to C whistle. Oh well!! I have used the Bloody Hand template in making half a dozen other whistles in copper and it has worked perfectly every time.