Jason Silver

Thursday, January 12th, 2006

I Created My Best Penny Whistle Yet!

Last night Lucas and I went to Canadian Tire (on our way to Tim Hortons for donuts and coffee!) and I bought a $10, 12 foot length of 3/4" CPVC pipe.

"Why," you say? I'm glad you asked!

I'll give you the background first: In February we're doing Favourite Canadian Artists as the theme for Hamilton's Best Valentine's Party, and one of the songs has a low whistle in it (Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On). I didn't have this key, so I thought I'd build my own.

I started out with the lathe, and turned a beautiful recorder shape, the bored a nice chamber down the center of it, but I couldn't get the fipple-- the whistle part-- to make a very loud noise. Back to the drawing board.

So I decided to use PVC.

Wow! I can't believe how much easier this is to work with! The fipple was quick and simple-- in fact the whole whistle was completed in about 2 hours! It's perfectly in tune, (and tunable, thanks to a coupling in the middle) so I know my flut-automatic program is working! This JavaScript program tells you how big the holes should be, where they should be, etc.

It's not very loud, so I have to figure out how to get more volume-- especially on the low notes.

To buy this whistle, also made from CPVC pipe, it would cost me anywhere from $80 to $160 USD. This cost me about $15, and I have enough pipe to make about 6 more whistles.

Anyone want to commission a low whistle?

~Jason