Weekly Input

Well, it's Friday. I promised I would do a blog each week on Friday until I run out of any thing to say. I have been trying to come up with a good place to start on this and have settled on an attempt to categorize the types of whistles (as I see them) and the materials used in constructing them.
Very basically, the whistle is a tube with a mouthpiece. Air blown in the mouthpiece excites the air to vibrate at a frequency determined by the length of the tube (the longer the tube, the lower the frequency). To allow the thing to be played as a musical instrument, holes are placed along the tube to effectively lengthen or shorten the air column to produce the notes of a diatonic scale. The full length of the tube determines the base frequency, or key, of the whistle. Each whistle can be played quite simply (with cross fingering) in a second key a 4th above the base key of the whistle; i.e, a D whistle can also play in the key of G (replacing the C# with a C natural).
As far as the materials used in their construction, whistles are constructed (pretty much always) of one of three materials or various combinations of the three. The materials are; metal (hence the term "tin whistle"), wood and plastic/polymers.
The choice of materials used is determined by the sound wanted, the cost of materials, the workability for construction purposes, the durability and (often) the appearance of the whistle.
After many, many trials on my part (you should see the box of many dozens of different mouthpieces that didn't work out), I have settled on Delrin (Acetal) polymer for mouth pieces and wood or wood/polymer laminates for the tubes. I also use brass for tuning slides and tube and mouthpiece fittings.
Well, next week I plan to discuss the tube materials I use and will make the leap to include photos of the various materials.