I’m pleased to report that my experiment making a D whistle has been largely successful! It’s a stainless steel headjoint with a brass body tube, though I am looking into other tube materials of appropriate wall thickness. It sounds pretty good, but my first thought after playing it was, “Man, it’d be even cooler if this was a Bb.” So now I’m trying to work out the calculations of how bore diameter, wall thickness and window dimensions translate across the keys. I’m hoping to end up with an E, Eb, C, Bb and maybe A. I am aware from previous threads that this relationship is not linear, and may vary substantially from the theoretical model to the actual whistle. I do have access to a complement of old Generation whistles (which mine are seeking to emulate), so would there be any point to performing measurements on these and computing the ratios?
Thanks very much for your input! Hope to have pictures and sound samples soon.
You’re definitely going to need a tuning calculator. You’ve already used TWJCalc. If you’re not satisfied with results from it, you could go back to Feadoggie’s recommendations: /viewtopic.php?f=1&t=98788&p=1148911#p1148899.
I would think a comparison with the generations would be helpful. It certainly could not hurt. One way to compare them would be to look at a set of generations lined up G F Eb D C Bb and note the location of the tone holes. When lining them up, also note the location of the sound hole/window, especially the bottom edge. This should give you a better idea of the scaling gradation than simply comparing, say, a D gen to a Bb gen. This may give you an idea of where you want to be for your A and E whistle, as generation never made whistles in those keys. Also, for the Bb whistle you could try making a head that could be fitted to the generation tube. Good luck.
Thanks for the input! I’ll have a look at the WIDesigner. I’m not at all concerned about tuning since I find that fairly straightforward, but more about tone preservation across the series. I am prepared to make adjustments, but I was hoping to start with a scientifically-generated figure for the diameter of the headjoint and width of the windway. Bore I’m getting from Hans Bracker’s excellent graph of “optimal” bore diameter, which I’ve found to be accurate to my tastes.