Snakewood turning squares?

Understanding that your post was not intended as a commercial post... I am interested in the how-to of your whistles... I have been playing around with little train Whistles. with some success. My grandson loves them... Last week-end I took him to a fiddle festival... He saw a lady playing a flute... that looked and sounded like your product... He ask me to make him one... I said... sure... NO PROBLEM for Pappa! Now I have to figure out how to do it... It occurs to me some of the others in the group might enjoy playing around with it also... SO... are you willing to share Tec and supply sources?

Thanks Big Mike ____________________________________________________________________________

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Bill

BREWERPAUL wrote: : A customer wants one made from Snakewood, and I don't know of any good sources : of well cured, stable timber like this. I need a piece 1x1x12" for a whistle. : If anyone here has such wood they'd be willing to part with, please let me : know, or if you know of good sources that don't have very high minimal orders, : I'd like to know that too. Thanks.

Try Tropical Exotic Hardwoods, at

Not sure exactly what you mean by that, but I can give a bit of an idea of how my whistles are made. First of all, I do the turning on a metal lathe, not a wood lathe. Mine's an old Sears/Atlas 6x18". I take the 1x1x12 and turn it into a cylinder, then cut it into the two halves of the whistle. Drilling is done with a gundrill, with an air compressor blowing the chips out. The wood is spun in the lathe and the gundrill (custom made) us fixed in the tailstock. The free end of the piece is held stable in a ball bearing steadyrest (also custom made). The bore of the whistle is 0.500". At this point the wood is allowed to "rest" for a month or more to absorb or lose moisture and do any expanding or contracting that it wants to do. Once it is stable, I mount the piece on a half inch arbor between the centers and turn the outside diameter. The OD is .656", giving some pretty thin walls-- this is why the precision of a metal lathe is necessary. The finish on the wood is Myland's High Build Friction Polish I have the metal fittings for the whistles made by a local CNC machine shop: I could do them by hand on my lathe but it takes much too long and I'd rather spend my time turning wood not metal. The plug in the mouthpiece is Delrin plastic which does not absorb moisture and swell. A section of the tube is cut out to form a windway--the plug forms the floor of the windway and ID of the metal mouthpiece forms the roof. The blade is hand filed. I install a tuning slide to connect the two halves of the whistle made from telescoping brass tubing-- this is inset into the walls of the whistle. I have a drilling jig (again, custom made) for doing the fingerholes. I hope this gives you a bit of an idea of how I make these. This is not really a simple one time project to make just one for your grandson. Check