ethnicwind.com
How Your Whistles are made. how to make an Irish whistle. how to make a low Whistle. Tutorial on building your own whistle.
Picturs of how to make a whistle.
Next the acrylic is machined to size on the lathe, then cut to length to fit very snugly inside the
first piece of copper that we cut.
I use a pre-cut copper coupling for the outside of the mouthpiece and grind it down on the belt
sander to get the nice curve for the bottom of the mouthpiece.
Once they come off the belt sander they look like this.
I use the de-burring tool to clean them up a bit.
I use a second coupler for the tuning slide. Here are the 4 pieces of the mouthpiece laid out.
Next I take the original piece of copper and also sand it down on the belt sander. You have to
be careful not to let it get too hot, or the copper can become brittle.
After de-burring this piece I fit the acrylic plug inside it, and glue it in place. It is important to
get a precise window size in this step or your sound will be off a bit.
Next the coupler we rounded off earlier is put over the outside.
Then the acrylic is rounded off on the belt sander as well. I spend a lot of time with a micro file
after this step smoothing out all the edges of the mouthpiece. Can't have anyone cutting their
lips on sharp edges!
Here's a completed Mouthpiece! All the edges have been carefully rounded, and you can see
how nice the curved windway comes out.
The next step is to cut the body length to size with my handy little tube cutter.
With the addition of the body we have a whole whistle! The lowest note  (or bell tone) is tuned
during this step. It is done by making the body slightly longer than it needs to be and slow
shortening the end till it is perfectly in tune. The rest of the notes are tuned in the next step.
The holes are carefully measure, marked, and drilled. The tuning is accomplished by making
the holes slightly smaller than they need to be and slowly making them bigger, one at a time
and playing the whistle each time, to get the tuning perfect. It's a bit time consuming, but it's
got to be done!
Once the whistle plays beautifully I polish up the copper on the metal brush.
Here's the polished up whistle ready for masking.
The masking is done with electrical tape and pinstriping tape. This is a fun part to do because
I make each whistle different and I really enjoy making the various designs!
Some of the whistles get some Celtic knotwork in the design so I have to cut parts of the
pinstriping to give it the over and under look of the knotwork.
Here's what the finished knotwork section looks like.
Next I make the body design.
Here is the completed design ready for painting!
Here's my makeshift painting rack with the mouthpiece partly painted with the black basecoat.
After the basecoat dries the masking is carefully removed revealing the beautiful contrast of
the black and copper.
Here's a better look at the whole design.
Next I add the silver vinyl Celtic knot logo and key designation. I have these made for me at my
local sign and vinyl shop.
Then the whistle goes back on the paint rack and gets a coat of chameleon color, and after
and hour it is finished with a clear coat over the whole thing.
On the right is our finished whistle next to a bunch I have in progress.
When I have a few to make I"ll polish them all at once and put them on the painting rack.
Here's a weeks worth of orders ready to be packed and shipped!
The first step is to measure and cut the lengths of copper for the mouthpieces. Then I cute
the windway out of one end with a dremmel and cutting disc. Then I file down the blade a bit
so the air has a sharper surface to his when the whistle is blown.
how to make Irish whistles, how to make a low whistle, Irish flute, flute, celtic, whistle making,
making whistles, Make a low whistle, Make whistle, whistle shop, ethnic whistle, copper whistle,
whistle, whistles, whistle maker