MIMF

Take a look at some commercial wind chimes. You'll find that they're suspended at about 22% of the way from the end. This is where a node, or point of little or no vibration occurs. Suspending it elsewhere will damp the vibrations. Vibraphone and xylophone bars are usually aluminum, and are suspende...

One thing I forgot is that port length, which I assumed to be the plate thickness at the sound holes, should include the "end correction", which accounts for the mass of the air moving in and out of the holes. Assuming the measured frequency is correct, and that Helmholtz got it right (saf...

I can neither play nor build violins, and am not about to argue with those who can, but I'm a bit confused. When I enter the values given for cavity volume and "port" area, guessing the plate thickness to be somewhere between 2mm and 3mm, into some online Helmholtz resonance calculators he...

Hi Cory, another Oregonian here. I would like to learn more about your interesting-looking flutes. I've made a few whistles from "traditional" PVC, and a few more traditional acoustic string instruments. Welcome aboard.

Save the Newts! Cooking varnish is difficult, dangerous, and best left to paint companies (but you already knew that). There's really no such thing as "pure oil" varnish, so whatever the hardware store has now is probably just as good as whatever they had before, if not better. "Oil v...

The MIMF library of past discussions is near the bottom of the main index page, but is visible only if you're registered and logged in. I'm not sure if linking directly to it is allowed (and also not sure how to do that.) Once you're in, click on Winds , scroll down to flutes, whistles and globular ...

There's a lot of information in the library section. Look in "winds". Under flutes,whistles, etc., there is an article on Configuring a PVC Irish whistle to get the upper register correct , and a lot of other good stuff. There was more discussion on whistles in the early days of MIMF (the ...

Square holes should work fine if you have square fingers. That wasn't meant to be facetious (well, maybe just a little.) Square corners tend to increase turbulence, and in wind instruments, square holes and square tubes don't have the same effective area as a round hole or tube with the same actual ...

Something else to consider is that any type of banjo is pitched higher than a guitar. This is only my own aesthetic opinion/prejudice, but on the six-string banjos that I've heard, the bass strings sound unpleasantly "clunky".

Titebond III might be a good option. Yup, that's what i have used before. I was just curious about whatever this is. The only use for acrylic glue I that I had previously encountered was for rubber mats around swimming pools and locker rooms. In any case, it's cheap. I might try it for casual use a...

Harbor Freight lists a water-based acrylic wood glue, HFT - item#91768, which they describe as waterproof, durable, and clear-drying. I'm familiar with most types of glue, but I've never heard of this stuff. Does anybody have any experience with this or anything like it? I'm not thinking in terms of...

I just "found" this website in another discussion. It looks like a great resource.
http://www.wood-database.com/lumber-ide ... woods/ipe/

What Yuri said. That's how I've done it for whistles, cornetti, and a couple other oddball things. There are formulas for calculating lengths for a specific pitch, but the open ends and fingerholes introduce an inconvenient number of variables, and you'll still have to trim it by hand and ear (or tu...

Ipe ("eepay") is a plantation-grown tropical hardwood used for high end floors and decking. I purchased some offcuts a few years ago at a local lumber yard pretty cheaply. It's harder than ebony, and has the same fire rating as concrete (and tough on tools). Some folks here have reported p...

In the Links section, under woodwinds and brass, you will find "How to Build a CPVC Bulgarian or Macedonian End-blown Flute (Kaval)", which includes dimensions and hole positions. The general rule for tone holes is to start a bit small, so that they play flat. Then, starting at the bottom ...