I had an idea for a tabor pipe made from dowels. I’d drill out two sizes of dowel rod, one to fit in another.
Well, I don’t think I have a practical way of hollowing out the wood, so I’m thinking I may try it with some bamboo or something.
Any suggestions on how to go about this?
I, like Walden, am trying to find a way to hollow out the wood. Now I have a lathe, with a 3/8 hollow centre on the tale stock. Now I’ve read that a shell, or lamp, auger is the best tool to drill a straight hole through the blank, but who sells them in North America? All I can find are sellers based in the UK. Can I use a 3/8 installer’s bit instead? Or another kind of a bit?
Once I have my straight 3/8 hole through the blank, how do I enlarge it to the size I want? I imagine using a long spade bit with the spurs ground off, but this seems problematic to me. Is there another way?
This is the best way to do it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_drill
nice straight holes, with very little wandering. Bad news is that they’re expensive.
Assuming one didn’t have power tools, what would one use?
Some taborers make their pipes from bones, using a knife.
And it’s not just the drill…you’ll need a drill, some kind of machine to power either it or the wood–like a lathe, not a hand drill, an adapter to fit the drill to the machine (most likely), and definitely an air compressor. Believe me, I started out trying to save money by leaving some of these out when I was first doing my testing, with less than satisfactory results.
If you haven’t seen this already - it has nice photos and is interesting.
http://www.mcgee-flutes.com/making.html
reg
Very true: to use my gundrill, I mount it in the tailstock of my lathe and connect it to an air compressor which blows out the chips that are formed. The wood is chucked at one end in the lathe chuck, and the free end is supported by a “steadyrest” which was custom made for my by Glenn Schultz.
Making of thinwalled wooden tubes is really not a casual thing to be done just once in a while. For that type of instrument making, inexpensive pre-fabricated tubes such as PVC are the way to go.
You got me going, Walden. I’ve managed to make my Tabor pipe (in plastic, of course).
According to the information I’ve found on the Web, I should be able to overblow the D to get an A, a d, an a and a d’. No problems with the D, d and d’ (and even a d’') but I can’t get an A. Any A. Is there a technique I need to practice, or am I just misinformed or deluded?
It’s possible to use a contractor’s/installer’s bit. I had some luck with one, was able to drill a few holes up to about 15". I had less luck with spade bits; they just really like to wander. If you want to go that route, you might want to PM/email Lucas, who uses them. Contractor bits come in 1/2" diameters with a 3/8 shank.
But, as Paul and Greg have said, the gundrill is really the way to go. Between checking that the hole is true, clearing out chips, and all that, it would take at least 2 hours to drill through a 12" blank with a contractor’s bit, while it takes maybe 15 minutes with a gundrill. (I don’t use a compressor, but a foot pump to clear the chips. If someone can point me to a quiet compact compressor, I’d appreciate it.) It’s not cheap; the drill was less than $100, the adaptor for an MT2 taper was somewhat more. I won’t need an adaptor for each subsequent drill, tough. But if you consider that you’ll save at least 1.5 hours with each bore you make, it’s worth it.
Yes, I can play an A on tabor pipe. Here’re the fingerings.
FIRST REGISTER
(not usually used)
xxxD
xxoE
xooF#
oooG
SECOND REGISTER
(the beginning
of the full scale)
xxx+D do
xxo+E re
xoo+F# mi
ooo+G fa
THIRD REGISTER
xxx++A sol
xxo++B la (xxø++Bb)
xoo++C# ti (xøo++Cnatural)
FOURTH REGISTER
xxx+++D do
xxo+++E re
xox+++F# mi
et cetera
Thanks. I’ll keep trying then. At least the fingerings are easy to remember. 
The main octave is pretty easy for me to play (I have a PVC
low D pipe made by Mack Hoover). Beyond that is trickier,
but some experienced players can get up towards 2 octaves,
depending on the pipe.
I actually am able to drill blanks in about 5 minutes. I got my drill from Danjon, and the guy said he’d put a different geometry on it for wood (though what makes it different than a metal-drilling one, I couldn’t say).
When I was collecting my research information, I talked with a bagpipe maker (the name escapes me–I’m terrible with names) who had pictures of his setup on the internet, and I think I remember him saying he drills his blanks even faster.
My drilling speed is wholly dependent on how well I am able to center the pilot hole, and get the entire thing centered in the steady rest..even a little bit out of true makes the whole drilling process rougher and more difficult.
I use a forstner bit to drill the pilot hole, about 1/2" deep.
Wanderer, is the pilot hole the same diameter as the hole made by the gundrill?
Yup..i use a 1/2" forstner and a 1/2" gundrill, 1/2" deep pilot hole…easy enough for a 1/2 wit like me to remember 
Ha! Funny response, Wanderer!
The best way to bore a wooden blank is…Not to bore it at all!
Making wooden flutes and whistles by routing two halves of a wooden blank and then glue them together with clear epoxy is the best way. No expensive tools. No machinist skills required. I dare anyone to be able to tell the difference. Once the rough bore is made and glued together it can be internally sanded.
That doesn’t seem like necessarily the easiest way.
Rough-boring on a router, gluing and sanding would mean making sure you didn’t over-sand and change the dimensions of the bore, making sure you polished every little bit, and makign sure your gluing job was fairly accurate, so that your bore didn’t have any “lips” caused by the pieces being misaligned from gluing. Plus it’d mean that instead of using 12x1x1 blanks, I’d use 12x1x.5 blanks, and it seems like it’d be difficult to cut those 12x1x1s in half lengthwise on my big ol’ table saw.
On the other hand, now that I’ve got all of the pieces I need to bore a whistle with a gun dril, it’s one of the quicker and easier operations in making a whistle.
Granted, I’ve only ever done it the one way, so I can’t say for sure the gluing/routing business wouldn’t work better…I suppose i’d give it a try if I had a router.
Many people make native american flutes using the two-halves method..but they’re much bigger than whistles, and it seems like it’d be a little easier in the larger size.
Thank you for the information 
to clarify, when you have the end of your blank in a steady rest, and the other end is in some sort of chuck. How precise does this set up have to be? I don’t imagine there is much room for wobble. What method do you use for eliminating this wobble?
Thanks agan