Rattlebrained

One of the songs Blaise wrote for Swamp Train starts with an imaginary train leaving the station and every so often the thought of having a train whistle to start the song comes around. As often is the case however, ideas like that mostly seem come at a “bad” moment, are not caught then & there, and go on to other horizons. Fortunately this one was came along often enough that we finally met with time, and a computer, on hand so I was able to search how to make one.

I found a good tutorial at The Woodcrafter Page and went to check if I had all the necessary tools, which I didn’t. Without a drill press and the proper bit it wasn’t clear it was worth finding a good sized piece of wood since the deep holes would probably be difficult to make. Plus, that kind of equipment tends to be expensive around here…

However a couple of days later it occurred to me that other materials besides wood could be used and I just so happened to have a bit of PVC tubbing left over from a different project and a wooden dowel the perfect size to fit in it (20mm and 15mm respectively).

I’m sorry not to have pictures of making it to show but it’s not that complicated to make one. Each tube needs to be plugged at one end, a 45° notch cut out from the other end, about 3cm in, and that end needs to be plugged with a piece of material (easy with wood) that is sanded down a bit so that it leaves a gap between the tube and itself that will enable the air to go through and hit the edge of the notch.

When the four whistles are finished, you then need to figure out a way to have one hole to blow through that send the air to all four whistles. In this case the top of an empty water bottle with some plastic tubbing going through it. All nicely glued together with heat glue.

Two pieces of wood were cut to hold the whistles together that have the right shape for the water bottle top. Also, make sure to get nice sharp edges on the notch cuts, the most important part of getting good sound IMO, that and not making the notches too big.

Check it out: