Tommy Dion, Craftsman Extraordinaire
I serendipitously found myself with an opportunity to visit Tommy Dion’s shop in Santa Fe, Texas, a small town about an hour’s drive south of Houston, with the intent of purchasing a compact, three-section whistle as a gift for a friend. I got much more than I expected, and left with a wonderful friendship and more information regarding whistle design and construction than I could ever expect to retain. As for the latter, a brief stop expanded to over four hours and was cut short only by my schedule, for Tommy encouraged me to stay into the evening. His invitation to return is coveted, and I look forward to seeing him again in a few months when I again return to Houston.
As for character, one could not ask for more from anyone. Along with a relaxed demeanor and an easy sense of humor, Tommy is candid, generous, honest, and objective. Though an astute and innovative craftsman with both technical and aesthetic insight, he seems to take neither his craft nor his accumulated knowledge too seriously. Appropriately pleased with his workshop and its clever tools and fixtures, he freely acknowledges frustrations and limitations as well as his accomplishments.
Having seen only one image of Tommy’s craftsmanship in a photo on eBay, I did not know whether to expect a pristine, air conditioned machine shop with the latest in mini lathes and milling machines or a small, cluttered work bench with a series of home made tools and crude fixtures rusting from the persistent humidity typical of the region. At first glance, it was a garage with a periphery of work benches cluttered with old, rusting tools in various states of disrepair and junk strewn everywhere. I soon discovered it was both none of the above and all of the above. There was, indeed, a mini lathe and a mini milling machine, both pristine. In addition, there were specialized tools fabricated from parts of three or four old, rusting bench top lathes and drill presses, including the frame of an old drill press used as a fixture for boring wood tubes. Without the need to machine heavy steel, Tommy cleverly retrofitted and cobbled together two ancient, lathe beds into an extended bed for handling long sections of CPVC tubing, and other, likely abandoned, small lathes had gained new life as specialty tools. He even adapted an old sewing machine head into a tool for finishing the curve on the fipple, and his collection of fixtures for holding whistle parts in his numerous adaptations was extensive.
History had survived in Tommy’s shop, and he gladly pulled from the shelves older tools and fixtures to show me how, should I desire to construct my own whistles, I could replicate many of his techniques with hand tools and home made fixtures for my simple bench top drill press. Thus I not only saw his latest in tools and technique, I saw the stages of their evolution, including examples of failures and the associated insights. Considering the nature of the shop and the character of its creator, simply the anticipated evolution that might take place over the next few months would be reason enough for another visit.
In addition to the three-piece CPVC whistle that brought me to Tommy’s shop, I found a craftsman skilled in combining CPVC, brass and wood to make at least five distinct whistle configurations, with his wood whistles providing the sweetest sound, his telescoping CPVC and brass whistle the greatest portability, and his telescoping wood and brass whistle the most sophisticated design. In addition, his collection of both high-end and pedestrian whistles was extensive, and he seemed to enjoy the most objective, blind comparisons. Even so, without specifics, I will state that even a novice could distinguish the beautiful, clear tone of his wood whistle from that of one of the most expensive whistle in his collection, and he has several rather expensive whistles. To which Tommy said, with a smile that might have had a tinge of pride, “they’re all just whistles,” and that we each pick the sound we prefer. A refreshing attitude in a subculture typified in any genre with presumptions of exclusivity, excessive pomp and pseudo elitism, none of which were detected in Tommy Dion. I look forward to my return.
With his resisting the ubiquitous temptation to launch a web site, for now, those precluded from visiting Santa Fe, might best look for Tommy’s whistles on eBay.
