Shaw High D blade shaping - is this normal?

Whistle
1

Recently I broke with my long-standing policy of never spending more than $15 on a whistle and ordered a Shaw. One of the first things I noticed is that the blade is not flat, but is kind of arched/peaked: --^–. Not that extreme, mind, but I’d estimate the angle to be about 178-179 degrees off horizontal. I’ve never seen this before on a whistle; I mean, my Clarkes all have a pronounced --v-- configuration but I think that’s just how they’re made. All my plastic-headed whistles of course have a flat lip.

Also, the top of the windway is not flat either - it’s wavy and there are marks on both it and the blade section that look as if the tool being used may have bounced or skidded. For that, I just cut a small piece of .5 mm plastic and slipped it into the gap between the plug and the metal to create a perfectly flat surface and lessen the windway gap a hair. That seems to have made a slight improvement in the sound/breath requirement, but the lip is still something I’m concerned about.

So, before I go messing around with reshaping it, I’m wondering if any other Shaw owners can tell me if this is normal or not? Thanks!

2

Go ahead and reshape the blade. And kudos for figuring out a way to reduce the windway. You can push the top of the windway down a bit too. If you push it down too far, the bottom notes will start to buzz. It’s all reversible, so go ahead and tinker.

The soundblade on Shaws and Clarkes should be exactly parallel to the windway floor and about a third of the way up between the windway floor and ceiling. Sighting into the beak of the whistle toward a light source, you should see a rectangular area of daylight under the soundblade about a third of the total height to the windway ceiling. Again, tinker until you find the best positioning. Neither is correctly positioned straight out of the box.

Best wishes,
Jerry

3

I will commence to tinkering, then. Thanks for the confirmation!