I promised i’d send some picture of these beautiful whistles.
A while ago i sent some masur bjørk ( curly birch ) to Mitch Smith. This wood is grown in Scandinavia, it has a genetic flaw which makes the grain grow irregular. It has been prized for it’s strength and beauty, and is quite difficult to come across.
Working in this wood was experimental for Mitch, and as he said himself " they took an embarrassingly long time to make".
As you can see the workmanship is fantastic, the pictures don’t do them justice. Maybe Mitch could add some more about their making??
Beautiful whistles that are a dream to play, I’ll write more later.
My God, those are beautiful. They look so organic (yes, I know, wood is organic… not exactly what I mean). Almost like an antler’s texture, maybe. I don’t know what it is about them, I just get an animalistic vibe from them…
That’s interesting. Is it a wiped stain that brings the figure out so much? North American Birch is usually a lot blonder than this, with a finer grain and less contrast. I don’t think I’ve seen Birch with that much brown.
That is probably the most beautiful whistles I have ever seen. In the key of D and C, right?
How much did he charge you in total for crafting in custom wood? Regular price?
I want to see those whistles in action at the Dublin-pub downtown
Hi Paul,
I could send you some if you like, send me a pm?? You would have to get some guidence from Mitch, how it was to work with. I think this wood was a bit of a challenge, but boy were they worth it! It is quite rare, as you can’t see which tree has the genetic flaw. The tree looks the same as a normal birch while growing. In scandinavia it is used a lot for decorative knife handles, and being very strong has been used in tool making.
The D and C whistle Mitch made for me are supurb! the C has a tone all on it’s own, they are beautiful instuments to play and to look at.
Mitch’s eye for detail and ear for tonal quality is top notch. Hats off to Mitch
Mitch, I can’t speak to the playability of your whistles since I haven’t played one, but they sure win the prize for prettiest whistle in my book. I love the work you do on the metal parts.
Yes, there are some genes in you or some pschic encoding or some essence in your blood that reminds you of an ancestral time when whistles were fashioned from horns and things.
I have those genes/encoding/essences too which my vegetarian habits cannot obliterate.
Mitch informed me that the whistles will darken in time. If you look at the pictures, the D whistle is darker than the C. The D was made some time before the C so you can see the difference in colour. I think they improve with age
You know, the man just does really beautiful work and that wouldn’t mean much (to me) if his whistles weren’t also well voiced. Nice to know there are new makers on the scene who will continue the tradition of those well known and much revered makers.
That depends on the Guinness. Most times, the thoughts can’t be expressed, but Guinness makes me try … I never attempt to voice a whistle in the presence of Guinness (that comes later )
The whistles can be expressed. Once expressed they continue to express themselves and the player.
The Masurbjork pieces were a journey of exploration. This wood is not a tonewood - it is too soft to simply cut, bore and oil. All I could do was to cut it and follow what it wanted. The sealant is non-traditional. In the tradition, this wood is treated with linseed oil and polished. Linseed is very “filly”, what I used was nitrocelulose because of the resulting hardness that is required from a whistle. The wood has small voids around the dark markings - when the billets were bored and turned, one could easily draw air through the sides. So they were dipped in 1:4 thinned nitrocellulose up to 20 times to get sufficient penetration and seal. Each bath took 1 hour waiting for the bubbles to stop and took as many baths as needed to completely oclude the pores. At the end of each bath, the dried skin on the bath surface had to be removed to extract the piece without contaminating the surface (nitrocellulose penetrates quickly but dries very fast). The result was sanded to within .002mm to allow some surface gloss. With that, there are still some deep grain dimples on the result - I kind of like that - the holographic effect in the side-grains is retained and the fore-grain features are nicely promoted.
After sealing, the tubes were oiled and sat for 2 months. During that time, the grain continued to season (nitrocelulose is semi-permeable and allows a little moisture exchange to continue). When you cut any piece of wood - no matter how old - a wall thickness of 2mm reactivates the seasoning process - it’s best it sits a while before getting used for anything. What happened was that some shrinkage happened - the lighter parts of the wood shrank more than the dark. This resulted in a chaotic dimpling in the bore (even after re-boring). The dimpling has an affect on the final voice - being chaotic, there’s no telling which nodes and anti-nodes got influenced - the D whistle has a feature on the sound-blade that introduced a turbulence in the voice, it plays well, but will probably always be a bit breathy, the C whistle has a value that is difficult to put in words. When voicing that whistle, I was surprised by the agressive undertone - reminds me of the way Norwegian folk songs turn so easily into death-metal rock!
The color will continue to darken. I notice that the darkening process is accelerated by oiling - even through the sealant. I suspect that exposure to sunlight will also hasten the darkening. At some point the darkening will stop - being such a blonde wood, I think it will always retain the figure.
Personally, I feel that an unembellished metal trim would be an insult to the wood - what nature has created deserved an effort in the framing. The brass will age as the wood ages - the recesses will tend to green and the surface will become bright yellow, the tonehoes will become worn and stained with use. with new contrast occuring over time.
What I am curious about is how the sound evolves - sound clips please!!
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I wouldn’t know where to start 