What is a good online source for small quantities of acetal tubing and rod?
I’d like to give whistle building a try, but all that seems to be available locally is thick walled pvc plumbing pipe. Thanks for any suggestions.
TJ
Hi TJ
Almost ay type of metal tubing can be used to make whistles. I like to use aluminum,brass and copper in the thicker “boiler” sizes. I form them using a metal spinning system similar to this…
Google “metal spinning”
tools
http://www.rpmachining.com/tooling.htm
…after this i can use burnished metal leaf in silver or gold to cover the tubing followed by a coat of clear acrylic. Also, It is very easy to electroplate copper and aluminum can be anodized.
Spinning metal tubing is easy on any lathe. the tubing retains its uniform thickness too!
Have you considered polyclay formed over a mold with a wooden mouthpiece? some polyclay has a near zero shrink rate ideal for this technique.
Thomas Hastay
smallparts.com offers acetal (and several other plastic) rods in short lengths. No acetal tube that I can find. They also have lots of brass and al tube sizes. Probably not the cheapest source, but good selection and you can get small quantities.
I did some searching a while back and found that acetol rod was an easy find (see above links) but the tubing was either non-existant, heavy-walled, or strange sizes. There was some discussion here, and the pros (who’ve done far more homework than me) advocated boring the acetal rod. You’ll get exactly the dimensions you want, and acetal is kinda fun to turn, too. I’ll look again for that thread…
A point of clarification please. Are you ‘spinning’ tapered tubes from sheet metal or doing a ‘tube tapering’ process from existing tubes?
Thanks fellows for the leads on acetal rod. I have a friend with a lathe that will drill the rod into needed sizes. I’ll get some aluminum tubing with less wall thickness than plastic water pipe. I don’t think I’m ready to spin aluminum, but it looks interesting.
Now another question. What type of drill bit is used to drill holes in the side of tubing? When I drill tubing the bit wanders a bit, even after center punching the tube.
Thanks for all your suggestions
TJ
Try drilling a 1/16 pilot hole first.
Just from curiosity, has anyone ever used metal spinning to form a whistle body? Seems like they would need a tapered form to spin on…
As you may guess, I work on old aircraft in my spare time. Try Aircraft Spruce:
or any other large aircraft supply house. You’ll find an wide assortment of metal tubing, nylon and plastic rod and various other whistle materials. The prices aren’t as cheap as your local hardware store but, in the small quantities needed for whistles, should be reasonable.
Try these guys for acetyl or just about any other plastic compound:
http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/default.asp
I use bradpoint drills. They’re made for wood, but work just fine on plastics. I wouldn’t use them on metal though