Building a Windchime on Your Own
If you’ve been wanting to make your own wind chime, the following steps will help., However, there are no rules on making a chime so just consider this a guide.
There are many different details in making a wind chime. The way a wind chime sounds does not necessarily depend on only one factor, such as how long the chimes should be. This would vary depending on the type of “music” you want coming from the wind chime. Other questions you should consider are what kind of chords you want, how should you arrange them, and how big the clapper/centerpiece should be.
First, you’ll want to decide on the material used to build the chime. The tone of your wind chime will depend a lot on what you choose: wood, bamboo, steel, aluminum, brass, or other alloy materials. To get soft tones (i.e. a rubber ball hitting a glass bottle), soft materials such as copper should be used. For sharper tones (i.e. tapping a glass bottle with a hammer). For examples of the soft and sharp tones, you can listen to a wind chime yourself– small wind chimes are usually made with a sharper tone while larger wind chimes (usually one foot or larger) will have a lower, softer tone. You should also decide on how thick you want the wall of the tube or what diameter a solid cylinder to be and how the individual pieces will hang. All of these factors will affect each tone and the overall “music” they produce together.
With wind chimes, keep in mind that the whistling pitch is largely dominated by the length of the air column that’s used, as the vibrating air is what makes it “whistle”. Although it’s the material used for the pipe that determines what the “voice” of the pipe will be, the air column of the pipe is part that determines what the pitch will be.
Next is the cutting of the wind chime. For this, you can use an abrasive blade such as a chop saw or a toothed blade. However, you should also take into consideration what material you’ll be working on with the tool. For example, if you’re working with aluminum, know that its dust is very flammable so you shouldn’t let it accumulate. There is basically no “perfect” cut– the cutting of the wind chime will usually be determined by trial and error. The basics, however, for the sound and pitch of a wind chime can be estimated by the following cuts:
First, a chime that’s cut in half will produce a tone that’s about 4 time the frequency as the original length (pitch wise, it’d be about 2 more octaves up). In going from one melody note to the next, the frequency difference will be about 1.06 (i.e. note E to F). You can usually get the next note for chimes by square rooting the present number each time– listening can also help to detect notes that are out of tune. All in all, making sure the chimes are properly cut to length is an important factor if you’re wanting a “tuned” wind chime.
Besides the pitch and tone of the wind chime, there are also a few scales of music to choose. Some scale examples include an “equal tempered” scale that uses 8 spaced tones (although it “should” revolve around 12 tones instead of 
as well as a pentatonic scale (5 tones). Ensuring that the spacing between chimes and clapper as well as the order the chimes are placed in will also add significant positives to your wind chime. Typically, the clapper should be designed to hit no more that two chimes at a time. The overall weight should be evenly distributed throughout the wind chime and the chimes should produce harmonies when they hit one another.
Next, you should also consider how or where the chimes should hang on your wind chime. Reportedly, many wind chime experts say that a .2242 x length from the end will function well as it wouldn’t wiggle as much. Using polyester fiber or a nylon fishing line for such hangings will work fine, just as long as you make sure the holes the line goes through are smooth and deburred.
Have fun!
Related posts:
Posted in Building one