Came across this tip today on a handyman site:
How to fill holes in metal / How to fill rutted holes and drill them again:
Sprinkle approximately 1mm of bicarbonate of soda over the holes. Drip superglue on top. Repeat several times. Be aware that the reaction between the glue and bicarbonate can produce heat. The set bicarbonate of soda may be drilled, filed or planed. It will be as hard as stone and very strong.
Has anyone ever tried this to re-position a tone hole or another similar method?
I’ve used some sort of polymer powder as a filler to be used with cyanoacrylate glue and it is indeed quite strong. I’ve also used matching wood dust as a filler for knots, wormholes etc in an otherwise gorgeous piece of wood. To fill a finger hole though, you’d need some way to keep the powder from falling out of the hole. If you put a rod inside the bore, you’d just end up gluing the rod in place! Perhaps you could somehow get some tape to cover the hole from the inside, then fill it with the bicarb.
You could probably only do this to reposition a hole if the new position did not intersect the old one at all: I’ll bet drilling through this mixture would crack or dislodge it.
I re-positioned a hole on a plastic flute. To fill the old hole I packed the flute tightly full of newspaper and used JB Weld to fill the hole. The new hole overlapped, so I was drilling partly into the JB Weld. No problem.
For metal whistles, it’s practically easier just to make a new tube with the holes where you want them. Why bother making going to the trouble you mention only to end up with a really ugly looking whistle to show for it? I’m just curious, why do you need to move one or more of the holes?
For wooden instruments, a solid plug can be fitted, to match the grain and color of the original instrument, glued in place. The bore is then re-reamed, the exterior part of the plug is then turned or filed by hand to match the exterior profile of the instrument, and a new tone hole drilled in a different location.
However, we always advised against this, and suggested a customer trade-in for an instrument with the layout they wanted, or custom order an instrument to spec., or perhaps learn to live with what they had. Now in fairness, these were very high end, rather expensive instruments, and a large part of our suggesting people not plug tone holes, is that no matter how well the work is done, some visible sign remains, and the instrument is devalued significantly.
I suppose for really inexpensive instruments it hardly matters, but then again, if you’re going to go to all that trouble, why not just start making your own whistle tubes the way you like them?
The only time I’ve plugged holes is to use a substandard body tube for further experimentation (thumbholes, other extra holes etc). It takes me a LONG time to make a solid square of wood into a thin walled tube, so I hate to toss even a bad one without getting all the experimental use out of it that I can. In those cases though, I go lo-tech: I just plug the holes with several layers of tape, then drill on the other side!
Sure Paul, for R&D it makes sense for us to take the quick and dirty approach, I was just curious from the consumer standpoint what the motivation was.
Like many topics this has been brought up before. A quick search in the archives should bring something up. One way to avoid misplaced holes is to have predrilled holes available. I think Jerry has some and Daniel Bingmon makes them. Must be careful to not spill as they can make an awful mess on the floor. I have tried them but they only come in black.
Then there is the tone hole mover that can be used. They come in mm or inches. In any event measure twice, and drill once.
Well you see, there you go: With all these new makers cropping up, I simply can’t keep track!
In that case, like Paul suggested, tape - why bother plugging the hole at all, it’s far more trouble and time than it’s worth for R&D purposes and no maker is going to sell a plugged metal instrument, right?
K&S brass tubing can be found in most hobby stores and a few hardware stores. K&S is the brand name. K&S tubing comes in increments of 1/32’’ But most whistles are in mm.
(Odd, I entered a longish reply and it did not show up)
Bottom line: I tried this on a defective whistle and while it did sort of work, it did not work well enough to justify the effort. Not a nice enough repair to use on a good whistle, and for experimental purposes taping the holes is a lot easier.
This is all fine and good if you want to position a tone-hole on the same whistle. But what if you want to move it to another? Are they interchangable? How many does it take to fill the Albert Hall?
What if you start losing them, and they find their way into the ecosystem, and into the groundwater below our pastures? Holy cow!!!
sometime in the last year when i wasn’t paying attention, a cheap low d bamboo whistle that i own repositioned it’s “d” whole and got itself into tune with itself.
