G'day Peter T,

I reckon Alison's advice is the best wat to see what there is in the whistle line. Dale Wisely's Chiff and Fipple site covers the lot.

There is really no "Standard" mouthpiece on whistles. Small factory whistles mostly have moulded plastic these days but Clarke's 1843 originals (still made) were tinplate rolled into a taper and plugged with a wooden fipple. Larger whistles, particularly since Bernard Overton made some for the Furies (early 1970s?), often have constructed mouthpieces from the tube material to minimise the size of the mouthpiece. For my curved windway models, I use a thin outer tube, once again to keep the head small enough for ordinary human mouths.

Christiaan Dolislager, who sells his own style of aluminium Dolang whistles locally in Sydney (partly based on a variety of whistles in my possession) uses a common head size for his G and D whistles, sweating the smaller head into the larger tube. His heads are swaged, in a similar way to Overton's - this involves pressing or rolling to shape around a form and is a good production technique if you have access to custom dies, presses and rollers.

Regards,

Bob Bolton