The right pipe for making whistles

[ubizmo]

Well, I've searched through C&F and haven't found quite the information I'm looking for. I've decided to try making a whistle, and my first question is what CPVC pipe to use, and where to get it. From searching here, the consensus is that CPVC hot water pipe from Home Depot or Lowe's (I'm in the US) works. So I went to Home Depot and got some half inch pipe, but all they have is Schedule 40, in both the plumbing and electrical departments. This is quite thick-walled, in comparison to the stuff that Guido Gonzato uses. Moreover, he even says on his site that Schedule 40 is probably too thick.

Should I just go ahead and use the Schedule 40, or can someone suggest some other place to get something better?

Ubizmo

[Feadoggie]

You can make a whistle out of any pipe. You didn't mention the key in which you would like the whistle to play though. The white (nominal) 1/2" schedule 40 PVC pipe which most home stores offer will make a dandy whistle in the keys of Bb and A. If you want to make a high D whistle you should look for 1/2" schedule 80 CPVC CTS (copper tubing size) hot-n-cold water pipe. It is ivory colored. Both Home Despot and Lowes sell it around here. Home Despot only carries Flowguard Gold brands which is fine. Lowes, at least here, sell both the Flowguard and a more generic less expensive type. Either will work.

Ubizmo, I notice you are in the Philadelphia are. I'm just north about 50 mile near Easton. So I'm thinking the home stores near you should sell similar stock to what I have available up here. If you can't find the right pipe let me know.

Oh, and hold onto the white schedule schedule 40 pipe. Is it 600 psi or 400 psi pipe? As it happens the inside diameter of the 600 psi pipe is the same as the outside diameter of the schedule 80 pipe. You can use the schedule 40 pipe as the outer mouthpiece sleeve on the schedule 80 pipe or as a coupler for a simple two piece whistle.

Guido's plans assume European standard pipe. I've got a couple of his whistle. Nice work too! The pipe he uses is much thinner walled than what you will find in the US. But that shouldn't put you off making a whistle. You'll just need to adapt the design. We can help with that. Here's a previous post where we shared some thoughts on using US standard pipe.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=57416&start=45

Feadoggie

[ubizmo]

I'd like to start with a high D. Actually, my real wish is to experiment with different fingering setups, thumb holes, everything like that. I want to see what I can put together that might be fun to play. But before I start with any of that, I need to be able to make a decent high D whistle, I think.

Yes, I'm in Philly, so just the other end of 309 from you. I didn't notice any sched. 80 CPVC at the Home Depot, but maybe I missed it. Or maybe I'll just try Lowe's next time. Maybe a plumbing supply store would have a better assortment?

I'm not a very handy person, and I don't have a lot of tools. I couldn't even find my hacksaw, so I bought another over the weekend, along with a set of "hobby files", i.e., little files that look like they could come in handy. I now have some 3/4" sched. 40 (from a local hardware store), and some 1/2" sched. 40. I don't know what psi; I'll have to check.

I think Guido uses some sort of awl to make the holes. I have a power drill, but I suspect it'll be hard to get the holes right where I want them.

Ubizmo

[Feadoggie]

But before I start with any of that, I need to be able to make a decent high D whistle, I think.

Yeah, that's a good plan!

I'll just try Lowe's next time. Maybe a plumbing supply store would have a better assortment?

Lowes is a good bet. There are two aisles in the stores up here which have plumbing pipe. If the layout of the stores near you are similar to those here then there will be an aisle with pipe laying horizontally on racks. You can find the schedule 40 pipes there and some big bore drain pipe too (I really have to get around to making a whistle out of two inch pipe some day.) The schedule 80 pipe is usually in the next aisle over standing on end. There should be 1/2", 3/4" and maybe 1" schedule 80 pipe in ten foot lengths. The 1/2" and 3/4" may also be stocked in 5 foot lengths (cheaper and easier to carry in a car).

I think Guido uses some sort of awl to make the holes. I have a power drill, but I suspect it'll be hard to get the holes right where I want them.

Guido used a set of kitchen scissors/shears in one photo if I recall. You can use a power drill but as you say, it's a job to get the holes where you want them and to not drill all the way through the pipe. If you clamp the pipe and proceed slowly you can pull the feat off. Remember that the pipe will want to grab the drill bit as it goes through the wall. Be prepared and keep a steady hand. Another thing you could try is to find a drilling jig like this.


Let us know how things go.

Feadoggie

[henryz]

I started out my hobby whistle making using the Gonzato design with 1/2" CPVC CTS SDR 11 pipe. I got reasonably good results, even though the pipe wall thickness is ~0.072" (0.068" minimum). If you use wood for the block material, I'd suggest varnishing it of giving it a couple coats of aerosol urethane to water proof it after you're stisfied with the whistle voicing. Guido's hole layouts are not a bad place to start - they were pretty close (to being in tune) even with the thicker-walled pipe. If you make the holes with a power drill, use a variable speed model and go slow for control. I use a drill press with a cross-slide vise bolted to the table and run it at the slowest speed possible.

PS - CTS pipe specs. can be found here: http://www.harvel.com/tech-specs-cts-plumbing.asp

[Feadoggie]

PS - CTS pipe specs. can be found here: http://www.harvel.com/tech-specs-cts-plumbing.asp

Harvel, oh Harvel. They haunt my dreams! Harvel happens to manufacture CPVC/PVC pipe about 7 miles from where I live. Here's how obsessed I was about making whistles a few years ago. There is a wicked bend in the highway heading out of the city of Easton. It's well marked but apparently a truck driver carrying a load of Harvel pipe from the plant wasn't familiar with the road. He dumped a fully loaded flatbed trailer. PVC and CPVC were all over the place. The road was closed for 20 hours. I offered to help clean up some of the mess but the officials wouldn't let me near it. I am sure Harvel recycled the wasted pipe.

Henryz brings up another factor you should consider when using the CTS pipe. The outside diameter of the pipe is standardized. The wall thickness and therefore the bore can vary a bit due to the extrusion process. That rarely presents much of an issue for tuning calculations, especially if you make a whistle with a tuning slide. But getting a plug to fit properly might require some careful measuring and fitting. If you use a 1/2" dowel as your plug material you might want to test the fit the dowel before you leave the home store. It should have a slightly larger diameter than the pipe bore. You will have to reduce the diameter of the dowel a little bit for a nice fit. On very rare occasions the dowel will be a loose fit so try to avoid that.

Work safe and have fun!

Feadoggie

[henryz]

I think Mack Hoover once referred to whistle-making as "the magnificent obsession". (Not 100% sure about that, though.)

[ubizmo]

Thanks for these suggestions. I've been busy, but I hope to make a trip to Lowe's tomorrow to see what I can find.

Once I get a whistle with a decent sound, I'd like to saw off the head and make a tuning slide for it. Then I can work on making various bodies with different fingering experiments. For example, I'd like to understand why a recorder is able to use OXOOOO for Cnat, and OOOOOO for C#, but no whistle does that. Is it because no one wants that fingering? Is it because it can't be done, owing to the conical form of the recorder or some other property? Ideally, I'd like to make a whistle with recorder fingering for the top hand and whistle fingering for the bottom hand. That would include a thumb hole for middle D, so that there would be redundancy between the two octaves. As I say, maybe none of this will work on a whistle, or maybe it'll work in the first octave but throw everything out of whack in the 2nd. I'll find out by trying it.

It's also interesting to me that cross-fingered accidentals work better on some whistles than others. They hardly work at all on my Gen Bb, but they work very well on my Gonzato alto G and Impempe high D. As a general thing, I prefer a whistle that has them to one that doesn't, since I don't just play ITM, and I want all the notes I can get. I can half-hole okay, but there are times when half-holing just isn't ideal.

So once I manage to produce a whistle that actually plays, I can fiddle with bodies with different hole sizes and spacings to my heart's content. Of course, getting a playable whistle may take a good while.

Ubizmo

[Dain]

This may come as a bit of off-topic question, but what's the cost of the Flowguard 1 inch diameter CPVC pipe in the States (per meter, or foot or whatever)?

[drumbent]

I'd like to start with a high D. Actually, my real wish is to experiment with different fingering setups, thumb holes, everything like that. I want to see what I can put together that might be fun to play.

Hi ubizmo,

I've done just that with my homemade pvc low D whistle. Started out with regular tuning, then cut the head off to add a join to make it tunable. Bu then realized I could easily add other lower sections with different scales. Details at this blog post: http://drumbent.blogspot.com/2010/10/ev ... ation.html.


I haven't yet tried adding thumb holes, but hey why not? I come from playing recorder and sax, so more than six holes is fine by me.

Mark

[ubizmo]

I made the trip to Lowe's this morning and got 10 feet of Genova 1/2" CTS "Uncopper" 100 psi CPVC pipe. I'm pretty sure this had the thinnest walls of any CPVC pipe in the store, though still a bit thicker than the material of my Gonzato G. I hope it will work.

And I got a little carried away and bought one of those Dremel gadgets, a few cutting wheels, and precision drill bits. I just have a feeling that I'll make a pig's ear of this if I try to cut the fipple slot using a hacksaw or snippers. I may make a pig's ear of it anyway, but at least I'll do it with cool power tools.

They had two kinds of 1/2" dowel: oak and poplar. I got both. I suspect the oak will take longer to sand down to size, but may work better.

I also got a few of those pipe couplers, for $.25 each. I don't know if they'll be useful or not.

So I'm excited! Now I just need to find a few hours to try this stuff out.

Ubizmo

[Feadoggie]

I made the trip to Lowe's this morning and got 10 feet of Genova 1/2" CTS "Uncopper" 100 psi CPVC pipe. I'm pretty sure this had the thinnest walls of any CPVC pipe in the store, though still a bit thicker than the material of my Gonzato G. I hope it will work.

That's the stuff! I've made a few hundred whistles out of the Genova pipe. I've got two dozen more high D's from Genova pipe sitting on the bench waiting to have their windways cut.

And I got a little carried away and bought one of those Dremel gadgets, a few cutting wheels, and precision drill bits. I just have a feeling that I'll make a pig's ear of this if I try to cut the fipple slot using a hacksaw or snippers. I may make a pig's ear of it anyway, but at least I'll do it with cool power tools.

The good thing about the Dremel is that it can remove a lot of material quickly. The not so good thing about a Dremel is that it can remove a lot of material quickly. Lets hear it for cool power tools. I do use a Dremel for one operation out of the 35 steps it takes me to make a whistle. Wear eye protection! A hacksaw will cut the windway just fine. You have to de-burr the edges afterwards with a file. An Xacto razor saw works very well.

hey had two kinds of 1/2" dowel: oak and poplar. I got both. I suspect the oak will take longer to sand down to size, but may work better.

Either will work. The poplar will be easier to fit, as you figured out. Both woods will swell and shrink with moisture changes so do as henryz suggested earlier and seal them. You can put a piece of the dowel in a drill with a 1/2" chuck. clamp the drill to a bench and sand as the drill turns. Keep the sand paper moving to keep a uniform diameter. After you get the proper fit you can remove the dowel from the drill chuck and cut the plug to the finished length.

I also got a few of those pipe couplers, for $.25 each. I don't know if they'll be useful or not.

These can be used for joining two piece whistles. I have also used them on my own low tech design which I made so kids could assemble their own whistle in a workshop. Follow the link in my first post above and you can see examples of whistles I made ten years ago. The mouthpieces are made from those couplers. Nowadays I turn them down on a lathe to improve the size and shape of the finished mouthpiece.

You're on your way, ubizmo. I bet you can't make just one. Don't worry about the pig's ears we all have a bin full of "learning moments" (samples of "what not to do" again) in our shops. Work safe and have fun. Let us know if we can help.

Feadoggie

[ubizmo]

I made a one-note whistle!

Actually, I made a very silly blunder, so the fipple end of the body was cut at right angles, rather than diagonally to match the mouthpiece angle. That left a big circular gap, of course. Nevertheless, it played! I was able to fiddle with the fipple block to get a stronger or weaker bell note.

The Dremel worked fine for cutting the windway, and for doing the angle cut, in fact. It was also good for smoothing the base of the fipple. Other than that, I used files and sandpaper for everything. One of the small files is just the right width for the window. I'm out of time for today, but tomorrow or Friday I'll just cut another length of CPVC from the angled part where I cut the mouthpiece, and do another windway. I had to cut a fairly wide slot in the mouthpiece, to get it to snap on, just as others described in that thread.

For this attempt, I just used the unsealed poplar, to see if I could get anything going at all. I forgot to get that aerosol sealer, but I'll pick that up.

Then I can start to think about tone holes...

Ubizmo

[Feadoggie]

This may come as a bit of off-topic question, but what's the cost of the Flowguard 1 inch diameter CPVC pipe in the States (per meter, or foot or whatever)?

I haven't had to buy any 1" CPVC in a while. But my recollection is that the 1/2" FlowGuard Gold goes for about $5 per ten foot length (that's versus around $3 for a 10 foot of CPVC pipe without the FlowGuard compunds). The 3/4" FlowGuard runs about $7.50 per ten foot length. The 1" Flowguard goes for between $10-$11 per ten foot length. I am sure there are online retailers that list the pipe if you want to do a price check. Prices have increased since I bought my last batch of pipe about a year ago.

I made a one-note whistle!

Whoohoo!

Feadoggie

[Dain]

Thanks a lot, man.

Here it costs around $17 per ten foot length, and i'm pissed off about it right now.