A quick note to those that might be interested. We’re looking for feedback on an ongoing project to make a chromatic whistle. For those that might be interested we’ll be updating project information at http://www.mkwhistles.com/toob as well as on twitter http://www.twitter.com/mkwhistles and facebook http://www.facebook.com/mkwhistles. You’re welcome to follow us and comment should you wish.
Misha
Welcome to the forum, Misha! 
If you’re wanting to collaborate and share ideas, you could get in touch with these guys and share some: http://www.tinwhistles.us/jubilee/store/whis-chromatic.htm
Very interesting. I’ll be following your progress.
Looks like an interesting project. If you make one in “A,” you could call it a Toob-A. 
Followed by “Hamlet” for the next key up.
Keep the color! How are the keys laid out?
Thank you thank you for the welcome! My joining C&F may be a little overdue but better late than never as they say. I’ll certainly check the link. You never know with colour and names - things have a way moving in whichever direction they choose irrespective of what you might’ve had in mind! As to the ket layout - the G# and Eb are as you might expect - on the pinkies. The C, Bb & Eb you get with the tips of your fingers reaching over the instrument. It’s not complete by any manner of means but I’ve found it a surprisingly good system so far and it leaves the original fingering patterns and tone hole layout intact. In other words you can play this as any other whistle but if you want the extra note, it’s there.
Good to see another whistlemaker attempting a Chromatic Whistle.
I like that fact that it also plays as a normal whistle apart from the keys, I think any Chromatic Whistle should operate this way.
I’m open to sharing any experiences that I’ve had making a Chromatic whistle. I don’t use traditional woodwind pads on my keys, instead I use adhesive back closed cell silcone foam rubber. The process of keeping the price down in the Tinwhistle range is very challenging.
Very interesting Daniel. The Matit flute [http://www.matitflutes.com] uses an elastomer O-ring - not dissimilar to your silicone foam rubber. [ Of course a Matit flute costs over £7000 (!) - and they still sell at that (I know that because I have a friend who works in the same building as Matti Kahonen out on an island near Helsinki). ]. Was price the only reason you went for the silicon foam rubber? My impression is they’d be pretty durable also…
Just a reminder that looking to the past in the knowledge that everything has been done already can save on the effort of re-inventing something.
There’s a C nat key on the back by the way.
I think you mean the Bb key is on the back…that should be the Cnat key visible there between the B and A holes, assuming this is a D whistle.
Jay
You’re right. I was mixing up chanter and flute configurations.
For simplicity as well. Conventional pads require flat “fraised” toneholes and I was eager to do that much soldering. Price is good factor, a roll of the 1/8" thick adhesive backed closed cell silicone foam rubber was about $40 when I first started making them, that will make several whistles plus I always put extra pieces in with a Chromatic Whistle shipment. Hole punches will shape the material for you.
Now, my Chromatic is on a Low-D. I had considered doing a high-D Chromatic but never got around to finishing it. Small keys are a lot harder to make than big keys. I have at many times considered pouring the keys from a liquid aluminum mixture like Devcon’s Liquid Aluminum: http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/items/5A457?Pid=search.
What also would be a fun project someday is to make a plastic flute that has plastic keys and get in touch with a toy company to manufacture it. — Oh well, there is only so much time in a day and there is the day job as well.
Thanks for posting that picture Mr. Gumby - do you know who made the whistle?
Daniel, it would be interesting to try aluminium keys although they’d have to be a good bit bulkier to resist bending I suspect. It’s great you managed to get a good seal without using ‘fraised’ holes and flat pads 
I’d have to disagree with you here
Well, I believe it’s a bit of an illusion to think a lot of the ‘improvements’ like those occasionally dreamed up on this forum have not been tried and tested. Yes you can learn from mistakes from the past but it would be silly to think the past holds only mistakes to learn from. The eighteenth and nineteenth century in particular gave rise to meticulous craftmanship and a flood of inventions and new ideas that were developed and experimented with during these times. Some of those ideas were doomed for oblivion, others developed and thrived for a while and went out of fashion again, like the chromatic whistle that has been around in various forms for a long time. So what I was really saying was that it can pay off to research an idea before re-inventing the wheel altogether. And you needn’t have said :
I always found it amazing that there wasn’t some form of chromatic whistle.
The whistle in the photo was made by one of the mass producers of whistles in Victorian England (although there’s an Irish reference in the logo). More about it appeared in the C&F newsletter some years ago, I believe.
There’s also ofcourse :
And I have seen others as well.
No hard feelings in any case - I just disagreed with ‘everything has been done already’ - but I do think we are actually saying the same thing.
Availability is certainly a problem, which is what I took Misha to be saying. There’s no ready source I know of vintage keyed whistles, not to mention the vagaries of key, condition, tuning and tunability, keys configuration, etc. The Orkon is rare, and typically offered at a collector’s premium once a seller realizes what they’ve got. And in the end you have an Orkon, not a keyed Generation or whatever.
The one in the first photograph is, in it’s basic design, virtually (on visual inspection, I didn’t measure) identical to an early all metal Generation I also have. The tube size and hole configuration of that Generation is in turn identical to a 1970s one. There’s certainly a lineage there. But this is moving outside the scope of this thread so I’ll leave it at that.
Yes, there are some other ways of doing a Chromatic Whistle that lends itself to peculiar fingering.
The concept of a Chromatic Whistle which I think Misha would agree with is that you can play it like a regular diatonic whistle and the additional notes come in through the keys.
The Orkon whistle is rather peculiar in it’s fingering - by that it’s not exactly an “evolution” of the Tin whistle. The patents on the Orkon have long run out and those of us interested in making Chromatic whistles have looked at and scratched our heads wondering about duplicating them but I really don’t like it’s fingering arrangement.
To have Chromatic on a whistle, it has to maintain the simplicity of the Tin Whistle and yet offer the additional notes, kind of like having the cake and eating it too.
There are some “flageolets” made years ago and the arrangement of fingering on the Irish Flutes is what inspired my Chromatic Whistle design. Terry McGee’s website was the greatest influence: http://www.mcgee-flutes.com/ with all that great historical information. Its great stuff to read.
The Prattens Flute design was influential subtracting the foot of the instrument and adding linkage to allow the thumkey to be operated with the pinky finger because Dale once said “Whistle Players don’t dig thumbholes”.
The Irish Flutes (or Pre-Boehm Flutes) have that 19th century simplicity - I prefer that over the Boehm system.
Besides, if a Boehm whistle is needed just pop a whistle head on top. Been there, done that.
BTW - I’ve thought about casting aluminum before, I have a muffle furnace that needs rewiring that would produce enough heat to do it. Also, there is Dave Gingery’s books on casting metals: http://www.lindsaybks.com/dgjp/djgbk/found/index.html that could open up a whole new world. Nice thing about aluminum is that it is very light. I thought about composite resins as well for making keys - some of my R&D time is recently spent on a few string instruments as well.
Oh, and my pads are contoured to the shape of the tubing.
Misha, I wish you the best on this new chromatic whistle design and feel free to write to me any time.