Yes, good luck with that. You are now on the slippery slope.
Do post status reports as you go. Itās educational to see what the issues along the way are as well as the result. It also spurs you on.
I wish you patience and skill. You want to keep luck out of it, unless you are only going to make one. Betcha canāt make just one!
Feadoggie
Thanks guys!
I doubt Iāll make just one. I canāt just let 2 meters of pvc pipe go to waste, can I? 
Try blowing down them trumpet-style and explore the harmonic series! It knackers your lips for fluting but is much the safest thing to do with them. Youāve had it now!
Enjoy, and have fun.
Naturally, I ran into problems almost immediately. The bore of the pipe is 10.5mm and the diameter of that wooden stick is ~15mm (it was the closest match I could find). I was perfectly aware that I would need to sand it down quite a bit to make it fit. What I didnāt realize was how darn hard that wood is, whatever it is. Sanding off several millimeters will take forever and it has a tendency of chipping very easily when sawing it.
Looks like Iām going to have to find some material thatās easier to work with.
West,
Buy a thinner dowel - itās cheap.
Otherwise, see if it will fit in your drill and apply coarse sandpaper as it rotates. Be careful. Whistle making injuries are legendary!
10.5mm is awfully thin - good for a F or G whistle. For reference - a Feadog or Gen is around 12.3mm for a D whistle - this is considered a narrow bore.
Hope this helps - and hereās hoping the global hardware industry decides to start producing 12.3mm ID tubing as a cosmic standard!
Yup, Iām gonna go have a look as soon as the hardware store opens.
Iām sorry, I misread the caliper. The bore is 13mm, nothing else. I shouldnāt be doing this while having a nasty coldā¦
Here are a couple of alternate methods you could look into if you get worn out sanding dowels. You can make a plug to fit any diameter material from either poly-clay or polyester resin. Both are available at craft and hobby shops. You just use a piece of your pipe as a mold. You do have to bake the poly-clay to cure it. The resin hardens using a catalyst. Use a release agent so you can pop the plugs out of the molds. Either material can be a colorful option.
Feadoggie
By way of encouragement/warningā¦ look where this jag can lead! 
Fixed and tunable piccolos
Tunable piccolo and G flute
Dangerous!
FWIW, the black conduit I use for the piccolos and which would be ideal for soprano whistles is 16mm OD with wall 1.7mm nominal, so ID c 12.5mm - the stuff isnāt absolutely consistently extruded, though. Stopper plugs in flutes are a bit easier than fipples in whistles as they only have to seal the tube and donāt form part of a beak surface, so I can use cork cut to fit or 12mm dowel wrapped in PTFE tape if necessary, though at the moment Iām lucky enough to have some polymer rod that has been turned for me to fit the tube and so is ideal for whistle fipples as well as flute stoppers. It is just so much easier to cut a flute embouchure than to construct a whistle windway and labium that works well - even if one is also making a Tipple-Fajardo wedge to cure the tuning issues. Iām actually half way through making a whistle head in the next size up tube - 20mm OD, c16.5 ID, like the G flute pictured above is made from
Great tip Feadoggie, thanks. Now if I only knew what that stuff is called in Swedishā¦ but I think thereās a fairly well stocked hobby shop down town, Iāll have a look around there.
Wow! Some really nice-looking piccolos you got there. They are painted though, right?
Corkā¦ hmmm. Would that be too soft for a fipple block?
No, the piccolos are not painted - theyāre just black PVCu electrical conduit tube rubbed down with wire wool to produce that silky sheen ābrushedā matte finish after all the other work is complete. Doesnāt work so well on the white stuff- one reason I prefer the black.
Cork isnāt too good for fipple blocks - itās hard to get a suitably smooth surface on the part that will be the floor of the windway and of course it can get soggy on the exposed surface at the beak, though I suppose you could seal exposed surfaces with a varnish. I did try it many years ago when I tried to make some bamboo whistles. Not good.
The stuff to look for if youāre going to cast some rod for fipples as suggested is Milliput - commonly used by military modellers etc. and available on eBay if not at your modelling shop, but Iād lay odds it will be. It is an epoxy putty with many possible uses. I have made a couple of whistle heads using it for the fipple block and it works quite well. The difficulty with it is getting it out of the casting mold section of tube - it will tend to stick itself on/in! You can use talcum powder to reduce that adhesion, but in the smooth walled tube itās hard to get an even coating which stays put as you press the putty in and try to make sure there are no air pockets and that it is snug to the walls all around. Donāt try to cast long sections! You may have to cut the tube to get the set putty out.
You could perhaps cast it directly into the tube you are making into a whistle head once you have cut a beak shape (for economy with the putty) but not removed the piece for the windway and window (need to do things in a different order) - youād need to be making a separate tunable head really as youāll need decent access to use a dowel to pack the down-tube face of the putty neatly - itāll be hard to work on it afterwards! Youād have to have a mark on the dowel to show you were packing the face at the right placeā¦rather complicated really - and takes away the possibility of adjusting the assembly of the various elements of the head to optimise tone production before finally gluing them up, so maybe not a good way to goā¦
BEAUTIFUL!!!
If it helps, two popular poly-clay brands go by the names Fimo and Sculpey. These are widely used in arts and crafts for all kinds of things from jewelry making to small sculptures. Once hardened this stuff is basically solid PVC. It is easily shaped and polished and it comes in lots of outrageous colors.
The polyester resins could be found in modeling shops as well as hardware shops.
The Milliput sounds interesting, Jem. Your flutes look great. Does anyone here know if PVCu conduit is available in the USA? I have Dixon and Calmont instruments that look like they are made from that same material. The latest Gonzato whistles are also a nice material.
As for getting the castings out of molds, I use a synthetic car wax or a light oil to coat the inside of the molds. I prefer the wax. It doesnāt take much to do the job. The finished plugs pop right out. Of course, commercial release agents are available as well.
Feadoggie
PĆ„ svenska - Polymerlera (bla Cernit, Fimo, Sculpey, Premo ā¦)
Finns i de flesta hobbybutiker.
Lycka till!
/MarcusR
Hhhm. Iām not quite sure wether this would be a good idea. PVC modelling clays such as FIMO contain a great number of plasticizers. Allthough the highly unhealthy phtalate has been forbidden in Europe (Standard EN 71 part 5), Iām not sure about other countriesā¦ Plus, Iāve no idea wether the plasticizers now being used are dangerous, too.
For more information see:
hidden health hazards of polymer clays
Thanks, Guido!
Here are some more pictures of (mostly) my more recent efforts.
The School Piccolos are very simple - plain drilled embouchure hole, no filing out to ellipse or undercutting, but they do have a lip-plate and a tuning correction wedge inside the head, the edges of which can be seen in these pics, one rolled āinā and the other āoutā.
Next is a shot of one of the newly made School Piccolos together with a high D whistle I made earlier this year with a Milliput fipple plug, and also an offcut of unworked tube.
Then there are some pics to try to show the difference between the tube as bought and the finish I get on it with wire woolā¦ should be obvious which is which!
This oneās using daylight to try to get away from flash glare:
Here are some detailed ones of the Soprano Head and complete Whistle. It generates a very nice tone in the lower octave, but the window is a bit too deep and it needs too much wind and is harsh and sharp above G in the 2nd 8ve and wonāt really go to top D, so itās not a complete success, but it was my first (and so far only) effort at a small one.
These show the Milliput fipple block clearly.
Next are some shots of the part-made Alto Whistle head Iām intermittently working on (my most recent effort) for F or G bodies in 20mm OD tube:
Loosely assembledā¦ not glued up, beak not cutā¦
Now here are some shots of the Low whistle head I made in 25mmOD tube back when I was reviewing Guidoās Low whistle and had a rush of enthusiasm for doing this stuff and experimentingā¦ I made some extra bits to fit on Guidoās whistle, then had a go at a head of my own - this was the first one I ever made and using Milliput for the fipple - this is the ordinary yellowish grade of Milliput, not the black I used for the more recent Soprano head. I didnāt make any new body tubes for it - just used it with the ones left over from my attempts at flutes in this tube about 10 years ago. I think the beak is too short for best comfort and the window is a bit narrow from side to side and maybe a bit deep longitudinally, though it works/plays pretty decently, if not quite as well as the Dave Lymm one I bought originally that got me started with the conduit tube back thenā¦
And lastly, the Low and High ones together showing the beak profiles:
Well, that was a bit self indulgent of me - I hope it is of some help/interest, but I must emphasise I am still an experimenter where the whistles are concerned - have only made two, neither of which Iād call successful. With the flutes/piccolos I feel rather more confident!
Tackar!
Jem, donāt worry about it. These images are very inspiring ā not to mention educational. I only wish those black pvc pipes were available here as they looks a whole lot cooler than the sickly off-white ones. OTOH, my first whistle(s) will probably not be a success, so once I get better at this, I can get myself some better looking pipes.
One question though: what do you use to cut the beaks in such a nice curved shape?
I was pondering how to go about making a one-piece whistle, i.e. no clip-on cap. Now, I have no experience with whistle making and the mechanics of wind instruments, so be gentle with me if Iām way off target here.
Hereās a quick & ugly image, itās obviously not to scale or anything, but it should help illustrate my thinking.
Would this even work?