Oh yeah the lower notes wind chimes are definitely better! The high frequencies of normal wind chimes are actually quite irritating to me. Yours sounds like sort of like a steelpan, which is nice.
@@RobertCowanDIY wind chime,s are a damn nuisance, & should be banned, unless you live in the middle of nowhere where there,s no neighbour,s, other people shouldn..t have to listen to them, cos the slightest breeze & they are just constant clonking..irritating noise,
@@michaelgoulding6609 Ha! I think you've only lived next to shitty windchimes. I think the high-pitched ones sound awful, the lower-pitch ones are quiet pleasant. But to each their own!
@@michaelgoulding6609 You sound exactly like the person I would love to live next to and play steel drums, hang 20 WC, and other things that would irritate you, guy. I could think of plenty legal ones! lol… I would live in your head rent free! 😆…While hitting my chimes! 😆
This is dope. I have quite a few fence posts and rails from switching from a chain link to cattle panel fence. Thanks for the idea. I don't have a 3D printer, so I will be fabricated some of the other parts from wood, but I can finally put those posts to use instead of just hiding them in a corner in my yard.
Uh… no. Self aggrandizing. posts are bout the ONLY thing “cheap” in this video. Notes? 😆 hang a picture pipe on string, tap it with whatever and use a guitar tuner if you have one.
I love wind chimes 🥰 I have many in my yard and I would love to build this big one 🥰 but I'm not a millionaire, just an old lady living on my social security, so I don't have any of that fancy equipment you have 🤦 I guess I'll just buy another small one from the store 😁 absolutely love your videos 😍
I picked up 6000 feet of 1" conduit cheap and am ready to start making chimes. I made one years ago without all the note science and tuning, just random lengths. It turned out well and I hear it outside my bedroom every night.
There are several blue grass shows all over florida we travled 20 week a year beautiful music people and outdoors we sold chimes ,wood craft, and whirley gigs. Made enough to cover cost and enjojed the great companyand the outdoors
Tips: Steel tubes with a seam don’t sustain as long as seamless tube. The seam can be a bit thicker and therefore more rigid, and this can mute the sustain. So if you use steel, find seamless tube. Otherwise use aluminium which is more common, and usually seamless. Aluminium is also lighter, and has a smoother finish than steel fence posts, so it looks better spray painted too.
I've been looking up the finish... Steel primer seems to be more scratch resistant than aluminum primers, because aluminum is non ferrous. You need a 2-part industrial epoxy primer and even then, I wonder how long it will hold up. I'm not sure what the pros use, though. Whereas bare steel, the paint seems to hold well with just basic oil based rust inhibiting primers designed for steel. Of course, the galvanized material isn't easy to paint, though.
Thanks for the idea!! Just bought 1 singular fence post and going to cut it up a bit to get a chime going and see how it turns out! Thanks for the spreadsheet and information on where to drill the mounting hole. 22.4% got it!
you are an excellent teacher. i think my old 80 yr brain cells might come close to understanding. i am going to save your web site and when it gets below 80 degrees/80% humidity, i am going to try this.
Great video I really appreciate you sharing and helping others who are looking into how to make their own clanky danglers. Yours sound pretty dang good, genuinely surprised a fence post could manage it : D
Robert, hugging your neck over the internet! I have dreamed of doing this forever. Saved this and that... 🤔 meh, clueless. I'm only moments into your video. But, I know already you have honed into my dream. 😘
I'm in the throws of building wind chimes, but with a twist. I live alone out in the middle of nowhere. I'm building individual low-tone single-tube chimes tuning (ya, if I don't pull out all my hair first) each chime to a note similar to low-frequency notes on the pentatonic scale. Each chime is mounted solo around my house and barns, so sounds seemingly come out of nowhere, just drifting on the wind. I also build Aeolus wind harps, which are hidden in a wooded area and produce erie, kind of frightening sounds for anyone adventurous enough to investigate. 😂
Wow, those DO sound REALLY good for being relatively inexpensive for their size! I wonder how the ones with pipes this size, but which are about $550 for a set (like what you might find at farm supply stores or gift shops) are made, and of what metal. I would LOVE one of those sets but they are WAYYY too expensive for my taste!
I found if the striker hits at one of the nodes, the sound is the best. So, my chimes aren't aligned at the top, but the nodes are aligned with the striker.
Yeah I made one out of wood and EMT didn't tune it also used nylon cordage to hang them you can hang another striker on the same line just down farther to strike the longer pipes my wife loved them they lasted several years and a bad wind storm tangled them all up and broke some strings and the wooden striker, the sound was awesome !
excellent effort in putting the idea in reality , i was also thinking it is quite easy with aluminium 1" dia & 1 mm thick tube , but could not get pretty sound. what is the material of the fence post.
Mr. Cowan - Excellent tutorial, sir. And the final product sounds just great. I do love the tones you picked. I have a couple of comments, all related to wind (yes, all first hand). Light winds are (obviously) your friend. Heavy winds will make you think your chimes are going to die. First, the lower edges of chimes which CAN swing far enough to hit their neighbors absolutely WILL hit their neighbors. And where those bottom edges hit another tube, any paint (including powder coat, tried that) will be chipped off in a continuous circle around the circumference of the offended tube, as well as around the bottom edge of the offending tube (make sense?). In the case of an unpainted galvanized fence post, my guess is the galvanizing will eventually be hacked away as well, and you'll end up with a rusty circle around the beaten up tube. Lee Hite's solution to prevent tubes banging into each other is the "support disk". Haven't tried this yet, myself, but it seems like a perfect idea. The second high wind problem I've had is that if the support line of the wind sail CAN wrap itself around a nearby porch post (or tree, in my case) it absolutely WILL, pulling the line up through the chimes on that side and ceasing all the melodious cacophony. Well, that's not quite right; the tubes will still bang into each other, but the striker disc will be unavailable. It's not that Mother Nature doesn't like wind chimes; but she sure does like to test them once in a while.
Yep, I've had these issues, but it's not been a problem. It sounds just fine with the tubes banging against each other, but a future iteration would have a cage striker which prevents this.
tha ks for making this extrmely complicated with things like 3d printed materials. 😂 i think ill watch another video till i have a conplete shop and a 3d printer hahaha
You're welcome! I didn't make the video for anyone other than myself. I make what I make and use the tools I have! You can modify the design to suit your own skills and tools.
Very nice. A couple of questions: If you paint the tubes, won't it deaden the sound? If you don't protect the cut ends (un-galvanized), won't they rust?
Very nice! Have you tried leaving the posts in the original position and then simply raising the striker? I think if you hit the chimes near the top or bottom you’d get similar effect and it would look more aesthetically pleasing.
If the striker is at the top, there would be a very long stretch of wire from the striker to the sail at the bottom. If this is the case, during strong winds, the wire may wrap around the chimes thus creating all sorts of chaos.
Please Robert, can you teach us how to make a new sound healing instrument called "Kailani"? The way to do it looks like a wind chime but there is no tutorial yet on the internet teaching how to do it...
Great project and result. Is there a reason you didn’t make them all hang even at the bottom? Letting me know why-not may save me a mistake I don’t want to make, as that is how I would do mine. Thanks for sharing!
If you drill the mounting hole before tuning, your mounting hole will not be the correct distance from the end, after shaving off the excess material. As the length of tubes decreases, so does the distance of the mounting hole from the top of the tube. If you alter one, you must alter the other.
At 4:58 you say 'Let's get to tuning these things' ..... after you show where the mounting holes are placed. Then you shave more material off the end of the tube. It may not be much, but for every millimetre shaved off, the hole should be moved 0•224 mm. It may not matter much regarding the sound, but if the hanging holes are to be 22•4% of the length from the end, you can't really drill them then start trimming the end.
@@ThePurpleHarpoon Ah, I screwed up, the video was made after I made them, I actually had them tuned already in that shot... My bad! You're right though, you need to tune first, then drill the mounting holes.
@@AkshatGulati24 I know what Robert meant by a wedge bot, I competed back in 2000 for a few years. We also host the Arizona Robotic Combat events, which Robert has attended.
Nice work!! They sound fabulous!! And i think they look great just as bare metal, too I'm curious, though, if you do paint the pipes, will it affect the sound?
"Oh my gosh, they sound amazing!!!! I would love to cheat and have your measurements!!!! Lol, if you are willing to share your height from which they are hung and the length of the pipe?? They are amazing!!!
The link is in the description. But you will need to tune them still, the wall thickness isn't consistent, so cutting them exactly to length won't guarantee they sound right. They will always need tuning.
When i see a full body spinner in battle bots i always see the shell and the teeth bolted to it. why dont they make a shell as one piece from a single block of metal? with the shell and teeth as one piece instead of being bolted?
The shell is also usually made of a more machinable/softer/less-dense/cheaper material then the teeth. The teeth are usually made of S7 tool steel which is about the hardest material you can buy but it's impossible to machine, is extremely dense, and can cost a lot.
Lee doesn't explain however how to tie from the large top ring to a smaller ring that holds up the chimes on a hook. I have repainted the wood parts on a set of chimes and had to replace the string that was holding everything together. The string kept breaking and the tubes fell off. (made in China). I am now having a problem trying to tie the cords from the larger wooden circle to a small metal circle that will hang on a hook outside. I cut six pieces of cord and they are attached to the larger wooden 'base' with eye hooks. Lee has his chimes attached to the bottom of a bird house which is not helpful to me. ~sigh~
Check the link in the description, there's a lot of math that goes into it. It's just the wave propagation, it will cancel itself out around 22% from the end.
ASA would be a much better material to use over PETG. There have been several people online who have tested color fastness and life span of petg prints outdoors and it does get bleached and become brittle in the sun. ASA does not though and is a bit more like ABS in strength...
This is so complicating!!!! I am using 3 and half inch manure spreader line, from the farm!!! (Making farm memorabilia!), But I was looking for the deep sound, so made them longer...but oh my goodness, so many things to take into consideration!!!
8:27 that is too cool, can't wait to build one! just curious though, did you try tuning by ear instead of using an app? I'd bet you can get real close and save "some" time.
Robert, when there's a lot of difference in lengths between your longest and shortest chime, it can be pretty hard to hang all the chimes where they'll be struck at the bottom. I see in your final set-up, some of the longer chimes are being hit well above the bottom. I know you try to hang 22.4% from the top; would that same 22.4% distance from the bottom be a good spot to strike?
Excuse me, Mr. Cowan, May I ask, Since Copperhead is coming in Season 6, I've also heard Teams from Europe are coming, specifically Team Shock and Aftershock. What are your opinions on them? because they're easily one of if not my favorite Robot from the Robot Wars Reboot. (Series 9-10, Team shock competed with Shockwave in series 8)
That's a loaded question! I generally feel that Robot Wars is quite a bit different than Battlebots. Of course the concept is the same, but with most of the bots being heavily sponsored in the US and the lack of a pit and/or house-robots, Battlebots tends to be focus more on insane damage, rather than strategy and armor.
@@RobertCowanDIY Now, If I may ask, How do you think Aftershock (If they’re in Season 6 and if Team Shock even decides to bring it, just repaint it or keep it the same) would do in battlebots? Would it be a Top 4 seed? A Top 8 seed? Or would it just be Okay? Me, personally? I know Aftershock isn’t Champion Material Compared to the other bots in the field, but it still a massive threat. And What would your strategy be if You and Team Copperhead Fought it and who would win between Team Copperhead and Team Shock? (Sorry for the huge question by the way, there’s just so much to talk about when it comes to Robot wars teams crossing over with Battlebots.)
I made a mistake. It SHOULD be drilled after they are cut to final length, but I did it the other way around. I was using the holes for mounting when I tuned. I should have made a jig to hold them while I tuned them and THEN drilled the mounting holes. Thankfully, I only really had to shave off 1/8" or so when tuning, so it didn't matter much.
Man, I just did this with 1" EMT and it failed miserably. Did the math to have a real nice C7 chord but the notes aren't right at all, in fact one of the shorter ones is lower than one of the longer ones. Individually they sound decent, but together is : (
@@RobertCowanDIY I did a B maj 7/9. I chose that because it's a cool chord and B was the lowest note I could produce with the tubes I had. I feel confident I did the math correctly.
Wish it didn't have that "whomp whomp whomp whomp" warble. I made mine out of the skinny fence pipe that goes at the top of the fence. Whompwhompwhomp.....
Mr Cowan, the wood pieces of mine have rotten due to age. I noticed you created your own with a 3D printer. Does it make sense to buy those parts to replace them? Or should I just toss it and buy a new one? Are these parts available for sale?
Length of tube in inches x .224 or 22.4% the answer will be in inches where you drill your holes. You can use a hack saw to cut. Try to use thicker walled tubes. Put rubber rings on the ends of pipes. Use wires that match the metal you are using for tubes. Aluminum use aluminum wire on the tubes, copper:copper, steel:steel, etc etc etc. Always use a synthetic rope. Nylon carries a nice crisp charge. It is a charged material that conducts sound. Its pretty complicated but remember to check 3 times and cut once. Always get 1 or 2 extra pieces, if ou are anything like i am you get excited and adhd and believe you catch the drift and you are totally wrong. If you have to return them because you are just a brainiac dont sweat it. Homedepot, ace and lowes have some.of the most daily returns numbers of any retail store. Not getting extra is going to piss you off. So do it and shut up. There are better designs out there and theyre much easier than guessing what this guy did. Also you dont have to have 45k in shop tools either. Which this guy seems to have. God bless him and i wish i had that. There is such an easier way to hang the chimes so they are level and even. Anyhoo i hope this assisted in helping
What are some better resources for going about this? I’m trying to make dozens of these on a budget for an art project. Should I just use the site that he mentioned? I like that he’s using fence posts as that does seem to be the most inexpensive option to build with.
@@RobertCowanDIY Ok, thanks. I am asking becouse of the tuning, the lengt of the pipes that are in the excel sheed that you share are useless without the diamer, right?
I love the idea, and it came out great. I plan on making the exact same chimes. I wanted to do the same with the little connectors with the brass inserts. Where did you find those, and what are they called? Also, where did you get the top piece? Thanks again for a wonderful video.
@@RobertCowanDIY Hi Robert, thanks for the fast response. I'm sure you have been asked about this many times. How much would it cost for you to plicate the brass connectors and the top plate for me? That is a very well planed out details.