Wicked Weather and Comments to Start Winter...

While the snow snows and the wind blows steadily from the North Pole. We Mainers like to touch up the landing strip for the four wheel drive.

Ebay auctions are interesting and you receive a lot of questions about your auction item. I have found that most buyers are concerned that the details of the whistle or flute on auction are clear, factual and truthful. I have probably said that I feel the buyers on eBay are not looking for a cheap instrument, but a good quality instrument with features that are important to them at a reasonable price. So, here are some quotes and answers from eBay buyers and a few from the website as well.

My favorite recent feedback on a Low D whistle comes from Australia.

Received my whistle on the 4th. Excellent service, awesome sound. Many thanks.The koalas on the back trees love it too. Beauty mate!

When you get a message like this, you have received feedback that lets you know everything you needed to know. Looks like poetry to me!

Another person in Australia wrote me a short letter about her Low D whistle.

Dear Mr. Brewer, I purchased a Low D from you about a year ago and learned to play it in about a month. Recently, I thought I would like a more professional whistle to play and sold the WhistleSmith and ordered another whistle for a lot more money than I paid for yours. By the way, I sold the Low D and made a slight profit on it, even though it was used to my neighbor. She really likes it and plays everyday.

Anyway, my new whistle arrived after four weeks wait and it was everything I had expected. The finish was beautifully done. The aluminum was a nice weight and overall it was as nice as I had expected. The only problem was that I cannot reach the fingering despite trying every thing I can think of. There is no use buying an expensive whistle that looks great if you cannot play it. I would like to order a new Low D in magenta with the silver stippling you do on some of the custom whistles on your website.

And the letter goes on a some length with some requests on voicing. I shipped her the new whistle the same week she ordered it and she has responded that she is very satisfied.

The same questions about the Low D come in every week. Are the facts about playing the Low D factual? What is a whistle with small hands playing sound like? What if I have large hands and will I be able to play the whistle? What is the distance between holes?

I try to answer these questions as clearly as possible. The email that really raises my ears is the one where you repeatedly get asked if your claims about the whistle are FACTUAL? W e l l . . . yes of course they are or why would you bother to type out a great big list of features if it was just something you made up?

I finally realized where this IS IT FACTUAL? query comes from. It is from all those folks who bought a Low whistle that requires BAGPIPE FINGERING. This is the myth that you can play a whistle with huge holes and a long reach for your fingers by using your BAGPIPE FINGERS. I would guess you get BAGPIPE FINGERS by tying your fingers to the bumper of your neighbors car and stretching them until they fit your new Low whistle.

If you have small hands, BAGPIPE FINGERS are not part of your bag of tricks. (How is that for a neat play on words?)

There are thousands of Low whistles available in new and used condition that require BAGPIPE FINGERING in on-line stores and auctions. They are usually accompanied by the sellers sad tale of a lack of time or patience to play the Low whistle and they are now selling the whistle in excellent condition on auction. If it says the whistle requires BAGPIPE FINGERING, please use your ability to solve puzzles and DON'T BUY IT!

A bagpipe uses a big bag full of wind to play. This steady flow of air makes a bagpipe playable. Unless you have the lungs of Goliath, you cannot make a whistle function in the same manner as a bagpipe. Extended fingering is another way of saying BAGPIPE FINGERING. Avoid the word EXTENDED when reading descriptions of whistles, unless it says EXTENDED WARRANTY. Enough said, I am sure you get the point.

While on the subject of Low whistle, I feel I should mention one more time, that you can not dry out and clean the bore on a NEW whistle too many times. I send out a complete sheet about cleaning and how to adjust your WhistleSmith Low whistle. I also repeatedly tell folks to read the instructions before they play their whistle and auto flutes to get the best results. Please read the instructions and you will have fun with your instruments and will give them the attention they need to break in and play properly. I will tell anyone that has not played a Low D whistle, that it takes two to three hours to get even moderately good at breath control and fingering the whistle. You should clean and dry the whistle a minimum of every half hour while you are breaking it in. That is a minimum of six times in three hours play...if you follow the instructions, you will have a swell playing whistle.

If you do not read the instructions and break the whistle in properly, it will not respond properly until you take the time to read the instructions and BREAK THE WHISTLE IN PROPERLY!

Several folks who have purchased the new Low A Traveler whistle responded with comments. Three of the remarks made by almost everyone is that the whistle has a nice heft to it and that it is accurately tuned and the octaves are well balance. I played this whistle all summer and on vaction and that really sums it up. No unwanted tricks to playing this whistle and people who got an on the road concert liked the sound of the Traveler.

Several dozen Low G Auto Flutes were sold on eBay auction for Christmas presents. Most folks played the automatic mouthpiece right out of the box with no problems. Six people called on the 1-800 line to find out the mystery of how the flute worked and had a good laugh about how easy it was. If you have a serious problem with anything you receive from the WhistleSmith, please just call and Nadiene or I will give you a hand.

And in closing for this week, an individual inquired if I knew where the name WhistleSmith came from and how did I qualify for that title. Well, I made it up to get a website name and it wasn't my first choice. I suppose that there might have been a Smith that made whistles and they called him The Whistle Smith to seperate his identity from the Smith that made tin stuff and was called The Tin Smith. His cousin who lived down the road was called The Black Smith because he was covered with soot from working the forge in his Black Smith Shop.

A name is a name and WhistleSmith is just something I made up to describe my new business. Did you happen to notice that my WhistleSmith is one word and the S in Smith is capitalized? I never intended to take anything away from anyone else who is a Smith. However, I noticed that my neighbor who is a Smith calls me The Whistlesmith instead of Brewer since I started the website.

Whistle Kids test a Wicked Good Slide Flute

This fall, I finished up some prototypes of a new slide flute. The flute plays in a lower range than the Mystic Slide Flute that I introduced last season. The reason for developing this new lower slide flute was suggested by players who purchased instruments and wanted a lower slide flute for playing two part harmony.

This new instrument is based on Low G Mystic Auto Flute components and has a very nice mellow sound and plays smoothly right out of the box. The instrument requires no break in period and uses vaseline (petroleum jelly) with the addition of a single drop of Extra Virgin olive oil for the slide lubricant! The poly plug capped slide moves effortlessly and the feel from the heavy fiberglass slide rod makes playing the instrument feel much like the motion of a violin bow. A full write up and pictures will be posted shortly and a special sale promotion is in the works in March.

The week before Christmas, I had a return vist from Jenna Hallett who is ten and her brother Jordan who is thirteen. Their parents are Greg and Jennifer Hallett from Presque Isle and I got to know Jenna from her mother visiting the screenprint shop to pick up orders for the local hockey team.

Jenna is very interested in music and I had suggested she take a whistle home with her and see how she made out with it on a previous visit. We had a short lesson on that visit and I showed her the basics of how the whistle was played, how the fingering chart worked and how to maintain and clean her whistle.

 

Jenna has been practicing her pennywhistle for about three months and has really improved her playing. When she visits the shop, she brings her whistle along and we spend a bit of time learning some practice repetitions for her to play at home.

I thought it would be a great idea if she and her brother Jordan became testers for the new slide flute. Jenna was excited about the prospect of getting to try out an all new musical instrument and Jordan liked the idea of the slide flute immediately. My exact instructions were for them to see how long it took before they could play a tune on the slide flute, how many wild sounds they could produce and if there was anything that they thought should be changed. Oh yes, I also instructed Jordan to see if the construction was rugged and let me know if anything broke. I think a brother and sister team will be competitive enough to find any weak spots. I'll keep you posted on how they made out in another week or so.

 

Deburring Tools Give Wicked Good Results!

Many of the tools I use on whistles cannot be bought in a store. A lot of time over the past few years has been spent inventing all kinds of clamping , cutting, grinding and shaping jigs and holddowns. Many of the knives and grinding tools have had to be searched for and altered to do specific jobs on whistle components. I have used deburring tools on whistles for some time now and they are great little gadgets for cleaning up the loose ends and removing plastic and metal burrs from pipe for a nice finished look. Resharpening these tools is possible, but I find the results are mixed and no matter how carefully you hone the blade, you are not always going to get a useable edge for cutting metal or plastic as good as the original.

Several companies make deburring tools and prices vary depending on the grade of steel and coatings on the cutters. Noga makes a very high grade blade and has a selection of over a hundred different styles of blades for inside hole and outside hole deburring. Grizzly Industrial sells a very good quality disposable deburring tool at three units for five dollars. I purchased several dozen of these because they are so inexpensive and when they are a bit too dull for working on whistles, I move them over to the wood shop to take the edges off boards.

By pulling the deburring blade down the edge of a board with the grain, you can round the edge perfectly in one pull. The fine curl of wood on a piece of oak or hardwood is fascinating to see...pull and a four or five foot curl of wood is produced.

This is a very safe tool to use. The end has a small ball that makes the blade track on curves and keeps the blade in contact with the edge. The blade is very sharp, but it does not slip off the board or piece of pipe because the blade is curved and swivels to follow the edge. I have never had a cut on my hands from the blade in all the hours I have used this tool. Bet you can't say that about your utility knife!

The edges on silkscreen frames are usually either sharp or a bit rough from ripping the wood on the table saw. After I nail the frames together with the air nailer in a jig, I take the deburring tool and make the sharp edges into a nice smooth surface before stretching the cloth onto them. If you make anything out of wood and need a clean edge, these little tools will do a good job for you.

My good friend Boyd Bowden was by for a visit over the holidays and I was telling him how much I liked using the deburring tools on my wood projects. I knew he was a model maker (very impressive sailing ships) and usually involved in some sort of wood project, so I showed him how I was using the deburring tool in the shop. He just laughed out loud when I showed him how easy it was to smooth the edges on a board. I had several extra tools so I sent him home with three or four to try on his projects. I also warned him to try them out on scrap pieces of wood at first because, it is so much fun to use that a really good board could be scrap before you could stop trying out the tool.

Another friend of mine and classmate in high school is Jim Warren from Bangor, Maine. He dropped by on his travels promoting the new drink sensation called Slammers. You should really try this product! Jim left me a couple of cases of product and it is sensational. It is a new milk drink that has Dove chocolate, Three Musketeers, and two other different flavors and lasts six months without refrigeration right on your kitchen shelf. Jim's brother invented the process and it is a terrific new product.

While we were visiting, Jim mentioned he was building a new hot rod from scratch and showed me a couple of pictures of his project. I showed him the deburring tool and suggested it would be a great tool to get rid of sharp burrs while he was putting the car together. He had never seen the tool, so I sent him home with a new one to try on his project. He was back today, and told me that he kept the deburrer in his overalls pocket and got rid of the sharp burrs as he worked and it was making the project a lot SMOOTHER.

I wish I had discovered these handy little gadgets whenI worked on small engines. The amount of cuts from working on small engines and lawn mowers were an everyday event, because of all the small sheet metal components with rough edges.

Deburring tools work better for rounding edges on wood than the special English tools made for that purpose and sold for a much higher price. None of the companies making deburring tools mentions they will work on wood, but trust me they do a great job. Try one on the next birdhouse you build. I'm sure you will have fun with this tool.

Wicked Good Black Squirrels in Arlington Heights

This year Nadiene and I spent Christmas with my younger son Jay and his wife Maya. Our newest grandson Ewan Thomas has just turned two months and granddaughter Anya is now heading for three and learning something new every day.

Because it is a full days drive from Presque Isle to Boston even if the weather is good, we try to swap Christmas destinations every year to even out the travel distances. Rodney Lee, his wife Patty, grand daughter Marilyn, and my grandson Darren (2.5 years and growing) headed out from Mineral, Virginia to visit Uncle Jay in Boston and when everyone arrived the house was full.

We had a great holiday with lots to eat and plenty of homemade cooking. Jay had just finished up the entire basement into a large apartment sized entertainment room with sleeping area and bath, so everyone could move around and have plenty of room to visit. The amount of presents around the tree was pretty incredible and I am certain everyone got what they wanted when Santa arrived.

Of course the weather was the really incredible thing for Christmas. Green grass, 50 degree temperatures and although the sun was missing most of the time it was a good chance to walk around and see the neighborhood. We were actually in Arlington Heights just outside of Boston and the house is on top of the mountain which is capped by the Arlington Standpipe. This is a landmark for folks headed into Boston and is mirrored on the other side of 2A East by the Mormon Temple with its gold weather vane of Gabriel blowing his horn. It is pretty hard to miss the Arlington Heights turnoff with two giant landmarks like these.

My grand daughter Marilyn and I decided to take our new Christmas whistles and take a walk up to the Standpipe and check out the acoustics of a huge round tower full of water. The Standpipe had a lot of folks going to visit their neighbors and people out for a jog, so we attracted a small group of folks stopping to listen to us play.

The wind was pretty fierce on one side of the Standpipe, but the side facing Boston was less windy and by flipping the whistle mouthpieces over, we managed to play without any problems. Since we had to share the camera duties , I have made a collage of the photos so you can at least tell we were playing on the same location. On a good day, you can see all of Boston from the top of the hill and it is really a spectacular view.

Anyway, Marilyn and I have added the Arlington Heights Standpipe as an interesting place to play your whistle. The tiny person in front of the Standpipe is my Marilyn starting to freeze in the wind. It really is a very big structure!

If you walk around Arlington Heights for even a short period of time, you will note that they have a huge population of gray squirrels. The large silver maples and oak trees are full of squirrel condos and there is nothing to bother the squirrels as they work their territories hiding nuts and looking for berries and seeds. Because the weather was so warm, all the squirrels were out and it didn't take long to discover the fact that the Heights has a very large population of all Black squirrels. This is a rare squirrel and is found in small pockets of animals in Canada and in various places in the US.

You can search on line for black squirrels and check out some of the various sightings listed there. Arlington Heights has a large population and sighting a Black squirrel should be no problem. Getting a great photo of one is a problem and especially if it is dark or rainy outside, they just so not show up very much. Leave your camera at the house and they will follow you around, but take the camera and they seem to leave very quickly.