So, have I harried this pair of op-shop Walton’s D whistles enough to offset the enormous capital investment of AUD $5.00 each? Nah! They are still “assisting authorities with their investigations…”
You’ll remember from our last exciting episode that neither played acceptably (dirty/harsh is a good description) as they came out of the box. I tweaked one with a chunk of credit card, but was a bit concerned (concerned might be too strong a word for $5.00!) that the card appeared a bit thicker than needed. Looking down the windway without the tube attached, even tilting the front up, I couldn’t really see a sliver of light under the ramp, just the faint promise of one. It would be interesting to try something a smidge thinner.
Then the notion occurred to me, surely we should be able to try before we buy? Can we come up with a temporary tweak, to allow us to test the notion before committing? Worried about committing $5.00? By now, you might realise you are in the company of a total tightwad!
So, casting around the dark recesses of the workshop (and there are many), I found some nice brass sheet, around 0.5mm thick (the credit card was about 0.75mm). So I cut up a piece to the dimensions needed, around 8mm wide x 5.5mm long, then stuck it to some double-sided tape. Now this isn’t the big bold double-sided tape used to hold down carpets, or hold up mirrors. This is really thin stuff from Sellotape, available in our local hardware outlet. Once the backing sheet is off, it’s hardly more than a smear on the surface to which it has been applied. But it’s good and sticky. I trimmed off the excess tape, removed its backing sheet, then offered the shim up the socket of the whistle, sticky side up. I balanced it on the open jaws of some tweezers, but you could use anything that would fit. Once the front of the shim was visible in the windway, I guided it into place and pressed upwards. It stuck out into the windway a smidge on one side, but I was able to edge it into better location, before again pressing it upwards from inside to help it stick.
I did feel that it wasn’t sitting entirely flat, possibly the width was a little too much for the little platform it had to adhere to. (This was a quick’n’dirty investigation!) I concentrated on making sure it was sticking well along the front edge, under the tip of the ramp, which seems to me to be more important than sticking well at the base of the socket.
And it didn’t bother me that I hadn’t “sharpened” the leading edge - that would be a job to do once the shim was firmly adhered into place with glue rather than with temporary tape.
Looking down the windway now, I could see the sliver of light I had been aiming for. And playing the whistle, it now sounded like a whistle, without all the harsh and dirty artifacts it had previously. It did sound a little quieter than its Credit Card Corrected sibling, but that’s OK too at this point. The real test would come if I glued it in permanently and cleaned up the ramp. The important thing to note is that it now plays well - it’s worth persevering with and we’re not going to make it worse.
I think though at this stage, all I had wanted to achieve has been achieved. Yes, it is possible to try out a temporary tweak to make sure you are heading in the right direction before committing! The whistle is probably of more use to me untweaked, as I can try out other experiments like this one.
So the mind now turns to what other useful shim material does one have lying around the house? For example, our local plastic milk bottles are a good source of 0.4mm shim, approximately half a credit card in thickness.
[Voice off, agitated] “Hey, why is this milk leaking?”
