Turning Whistles

2007-10-21T10:10:00.000-05:00

I was surfing the web a while back and found a tutorial about making whistles and so I decided to give it a shot. Turning whistles isn’t that big of a deal, but there are a couple of things that can prove to be rather challenging, but after some trial and error, I managed to develop a process that allows me to achieve consistent results as far as the sound of the whistles is concerned.

I’m still a newbie turner, so I won’t offer advise about turning techniques or designs, but I will lay out a sure fire way that anyone can get a decent sounding whistle with a minimal amount of technical stuff to fret over. So, let’s get started.

First I cut a length of 1” hardwood dowel about 5-1/2” long. The whistle is only going to be about 4-1/4” to 4-1/2” long when parted off, but I like to have a little extra “meat” to sink the teeth of my pin jaws into and still be far enough away from those jaws so that I don’t scuff my knuckles if I get a catch with the skew (I learned this the hard way – a few times).

The second thing I do is make a few planning passes with the skew to get the first couple of inches of the blank down to about 3/4” thick and make 3 pencil marks on the whistle starting from the tailstock end at:
5/8” - 1-1/4” - 1-5/8”

The mark at 5/8” is a reference line to show where you will make a vertical saw cut through the piece.

The 1-1/4” mark is the point from which you’ll cut back to the bottom of the first.

The 1-5/8” mark is just to let you know that as long as you stay to the left of this line you’ll be far enough from the hole drilled through the center that you won’t run the risk of cutting into it while you’re shaping the rest of your whistle.

Then I bore the 3/8” hole through the center of the whistle to a depth of 1-3/8”.

After cleaning out the hole, I take the 3/8” bolt (that I have sawed the head off of and sanded down to make it a tad bit undersized) and stick it in the hole. This will serve as a stop for the saw blade so that you don’t cut too deep into the whistle. Alternatively, you can just take the drill bit from the chuck and stick it into the hole backwards, but it’s a real tight fit, and you could bust the blank.

Cut the vertical saw cut from the top of the blank until you hit the bolt. Just make sure the cut is good and square.

Now make your back cut from the 1-1/4” mark to the point at which the two cuts will intersect.

Then take the bolt out and replace it with a long (3 or 4 inch) piece of 3/8” wooden dowel. The wooden dowel will fill up the hole and let you make a nice clean cut without leaving a bunch of little fuzzies hanging down in the hole. That’s your rough opening for the birdsmouth.

Then use a 1” wide chisel (I use a 4” razor knife blade with tape on the ends for handles - sort of a el cheapo draw knife) to pare down to the final depth (it usually works out to be just a shade under 1/16” deeper that the cut you made to start with) so that you don’t take too much out. Ideally, you should end up with a nice clean looking backwards “D” shaped hole about ¼” wide from side to side on the straight side of the “D”. It will end up looking a little wonky looking, so clean the opening up with a tightly rolled up piece of 100 or 120 grit sandpaper just to make it nice and symmetrical looking.

Take the long wooden dowel out of the hole and replace it with one about 1-1/2” (because its long enough to handle, but short enough to test blow the whistle without tickling your tonsils) until its even with the vertical cut, and draw a line across it from corner to corner of the bottom of the birdsmouth. Now sand the dowel flat from the top down to the line. This isn’t an exact science, so you’ll just have to take it slow and be sure not to over do it.

I have found that most of my whistles sounded as good as they were going to without sanding all the way down to the line, however, you DO NOT want to go below it.

Hint: The tone of the whistle is determined by a combination of the size of the hole in the top and the degree of flatness of the 3/8" dowel, so you can always experiment until you find a tone that pleases you.

To tune the whistle just slide the little 3/8” dowel with the flat side back and forth until you think you have found the best sound that you’re going to get from that particular piece. When you’ve found the “sweet spot” mark the dowel at the end of the whistle so that you can slide it back to the same exact spot after you pull it out of the hole to put some glue on it. I use water resistant wood glue since the whistle will probably spend a lot of time soaked in slobber.

Let dry over night, saw the excess dowel off, and sand it smooth. For all intents and purposes this is a functioning whistle. The rest of the turning is strictly eye candy.

I just put a coat of Formby’s Tung Oil Finish on my whistles and call them done. I guess I could do better, but I figure the little crumb crunchers are going to have them covered with dirt, Kool-Aid, potato chip grease, and God only knows what else, in fairly short order anyway

TIP: If you are planning on making several whistles, you can do like I do and have a few pre-flattened dowels on the work bench and use them to make a test blow while everything is still chucked up. If it’s a functioning whistle (and unless something has gone terribly wrong there is no reason for it not to be) you can go ahead and finish shaping and finishing whistle and save making the little dowels, sanding & tuning them, and gluing them in for later. I like to do that little tedious stuff sitting at the kitchen table where it’s more comfortable.

I hope this information is helpful. Sense this is my first “how-to”, any and all feedback would be appreciated. If I have left anything out, or if something is unclear, feel free to email me with any questions and I’ll answer them ASAP.
dkennedy_ar [at] yahoo [dot] com

Happy turning!!!

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Turning Whistles