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Homemade Whistles

You may remember playing with the homemade whistle your grandfather gave you when you were young. Now you'd like to make a whistle for your youngsters, but you never bothered to ask your grandfather how he did it. It's not rocket science. You can share your childhood memories with a few simple tools and material that you may already have around the house.

Suitable Materials
- Just about anything that you can make a tube out of will make a whistle. Wood, PVC plastic, copper pipe or even used bullet casings can be used as the body of a whistle. Of course, you need to be sure that whatever material you use is clean and non-toxic. Most commonly available woods, pine, poplar, maple, oak and ash, fall into this category. Stay away from black locust, oleander, alder and tropical hardwoods. If you are uncertain about the safety of a species of wood, don't use it.
The Mouthpiece
- All whistles have this one thing in common: the mouthpiece is the working part of a whistle. By directing the flow of air across a sharp edge above a resonating cavity, the mouthpiece creates rhythmic vibrations that you hear as a musical note. The pitch of the note varies with the size of the resonating cavity.
Making a Whistle
- The following directions are for a whistle constructed from a PVC pipe. The same method can be used to construct a whistle out of just about anything you can hollow out.
  
  Cut a six-inch length of PVC pipe. Smooth both ends with a piece of sandpaper. Use a small saw to cut a vertical slot one-quarter of the thickness of the pipe one inch from the end. Working from the opposite end of the pipe, make a 45-degree cut to meet the bottom of your original vertical slot. When finished, you will have a hole in the top of the pipe that resembles a lop-sided "V" with the vertical side of the slot near the short end of the pipe and the angled side at the long end.
  
  Select a dowel the same size as the bore of the pipe. Cut a one-inch section off the dowel. Use a piece of sandpaper to sand one side of the dowel flat. Remove about an eighth of an inch of material. This will form an airway when placed inside the pipe.
  
  Place the dowel, flattened side up into the pipe. The eighth-inch airway should be centered under the hole in the pipe and the end of the dowel should be directly underneath the vertical end of the hole in the pipe.
  
  Test the whistle. If you get a clear tone, glue the dowel in place. If the note sounds thin or off, try sanding a bit more off the flat side of the dowel.

Educational Toys