While working the Outreach trailer at the recent Stokes Stomp event, Richard pulled a turned whistle from his magic bag of tools. We worked on it during a couple of slow times and walked away with a couple of working models.
Today, I took a blank that was about 1" across, and 4-5" long. I drilled a 3/8" hole that was around 3" deep. From there, a quick trip to the bandsaw to cut away the section where the sound would exit. Next up, I turned a dowel that was 3/8" diameter to act as a jam chuck of sorts. Putting the blank on the dowel, and bringing up the tailstock for required support, I began turning it down into the shape you see below.
Afterwards, i took a 3/8" poplar dowel and flattened one side less than 1/16" to allow for the air to pass into the whistle. The first attempt failed and wound up drilling that one out, then took the flat side to about 1/8". Inserting this into the whistle, i left about 1/2" on the outside so i could grab to remove for further "tuning".
The ones we did at Stomp were not very loud, and you had to hold it in a certain way to get any sound at all. This one worked much better. So I took a small dab of TB, and applied to one side of the insert. While I had the insert long enough to use to hold, I rubbed on some Tung Oil finish.. After the finish and glue dried, I cut off the insert to the end of the whistle.
Not factoring in the time to cut the blank and section out, nor the time to make the jam chuck, flattening the dowel (multiple times), I spent about 15 minutes creating this one whistle. That also included applying a finish. I took it very slow as I used some burled cherry stock, so I did not want to blow it out by being aggressive with my turning. I did not use carbide tools, and I did not have to sand after using the skew chisel.
Today, I took a blank that was about 1" across, and 4-5" long. I drilled a 3/8" hole that was around 3" deep. From there, a quick trip to the bandsaw to cut away the section where the sound would exit. Next up, I turned a dowel that was 3/8" diameter to act as a jam chuck of sorts. Putting the blank on the dowel, and bringing up the tailstock for required support, I began turning it down into the shape you see below.
Afterwards, i took a 3/8" poplar dowel and flattened one side less than 1/16" to allow for the air to pass into the whistle. The first attempt failed and wound up drilling that one out, then took the flat side to about 1/8". Inserting this into the whistle, i left about 1/2" on the outside so i could grab to remove for further "tuning".
The ones we did at Stomp were not very loud, and you had to hold it in a certain way to get any sound at all. This one worked much better. So I took a small dab of TB, and applied to one side of the insert. While I had the insert long enough to use to hold, I rubbed on some Tung Oil finish.. After the finish and glue dried, I cut off the insert to the end of the whistle.
Not factoring in the time to cut the blank and section out, nor the time to make the jam chuck, flattening the dowel (multiple times), I spent about 15 minutes creating this one whistle. That also included applying a finish. I took it very slow as I used some burled cherry stock, so I did not want to blow it out by being aggressive with my turning. I did not use carbide tools, and I did not have to sand after using the skew chisel.
