Make a wood train whistle

I set out this week to make this years a New Years Eve noisemaker. I decided to make a horn or some other kind of wind-powered instrument. After making a couple of these whistles, I decided they wouldnt exactly make for much of a video.

I researched whistles and was reminded of the classic wooden train whistle. My son loved these as a boy and they arent too difficult to make. Its essentially the same whistle as the one above, but with four tone holes and a cap to direct air into all of them.
I took notes on the ones I made and you can download my measurements to try out. Its surprisingly easy to get good tones. Just take some time to fool around with it and come up with something that sounds good to you.

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Make the little whistle too!

A few people were asking for more details about the little whistle I showed at the end of yesterdays video, so I shot a video this morning. They are incredibly easy to make. In fact, you could just make one with part of a tree branch and a pocketknife.
And if you want a loud noisemaker for New Years Eve, this is the one. You could make a whole batch and be the life of any party. Yeah.
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Make a loud referees whistle

I never knew these were called "pea whistles" before this week. I just thought they were called "police whistle" or "referees whistle".
I got this idea from Carmen Salamone, who you may remember from the Marshmallow Crossbow and Wind Spinner projects earlier this year. Carmen really has great ideas that fit perfectly with Woodworking for Mere Mortals.
This is my annual noisemaker project you can make for New Years Eve. Here are previous ones:

• Classic train whistle
• 5 minute whistle
• Wood cowbell
• Super loud ratchet rattle

Free plans:

• WWMM Referee Whistle (pdf)

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