Making Tubular Chimes
(I don't have any plans to update this but it seems to be a popular page so I'll leave it up as a reference - 12/31/11)
This page is a chronicle of my quest to make a set of tubular chimes. If you don't know chimes are an incredibly expensive percussion instrument costing around $5,000 for a set. Me being a cheap SOB decided to make my own.
1. Research and Tube Length
The first step was to determine the material I wanted to use. The easiest to obtain was Cast Iron pipe like the kind they make pipe clamps out of.
It only costs $18 per 10 feet at Home Depot so it isn't that expensive. Anyways now that I have a material I need a formula to calculate the length based on the frequency.
After a lot of research I came up with 2 frequencies.
F=1.133 π K V / L2
F= Frequency
V= Speed of sound in the material
L= Length
K= Radius of Gyration in a hollow Cylinder (more on this later)
K=SQRT( Ri2 + Ro2 ) /2
Ri, Ro = the inner and outer radii of the cylinder respectively
and the other formula
F1/F2 = (L2/L1)2
F1= First Frequency
F2= Second Frequency
L1= First Length
L2= Second Length
Anyways after a whole bunch of math I rewrote the first and the second one in terms of Length.
L = SQRT(1.133 π KV/F)
and
L2 = ( (L1)(SQRT(F1))(SQRT(F2)) )/F2
Also during this time I bought a 3 foot piece of pipe and tuned it to A5 (880Hz). Using measurements I made during this processes I was able to obtain reference #'s to verify all of this.
Then I input all of this into an Excel Worksheet. Don't worry if this appears to be a bunch of gibberish I will explain it at some point.
| 3.91895775 | k1 | 3.89540235 | AVG K | 3.918957753 | Ref. Note | 881.7808774 | Total Feet | 95.74405681 | ||
| 491000 | k2 | 3.89429623 | Ref. Length | 87.868125 | Total Cost | 172.3393023 | ||||
| |
k3 | 3.96717468 | ||||||||
| |
||||||||||
| Note | Freq. | K | Act. Length | Length1 | Length 2 | AVG. | Nodal Pt. 1 | Diff | Feet | Cost |
| C4 | 261.63 | 161.7976307 | 161.3124647 | 161.5550477 | 36.18833068 | 0.485166018 | 5.300362456 | 9.540652421 | ||
| C# | 277.18 | 157.1936445 | 156.722284 | 156.9579642 | 35.15858398 | 0.471360516 | 5.149539508 | 9.269171115 | ||
| D | 293.66 | 152.7191615 | 152.2612182 | 152.4901899 | 34.15780253 | 0.457943341 | 5.002958985 | 9.005326173 | ||
| D# | 311.13 | 148.3696198 | 147.924719 | 148.1471694 | 33.18496594 | 0.444900815 | 4.860471436 | 8.748848585 | ||
| E | 329.63 | 144.1459893 | 143.7137534 | 143.9298713 | 32.24029118 | 0.432235845 | 4.722108639 | 8.499795551 | ||
| F | 349.23 | 140.0425971 | 139.6226657 | 139.8326314 | 31.32250944 | 0.419931423 | 4.587684757 | 8.257832563 | ||
| F# | 369.99 | 136.0570139 | 135.6490336 | 135.8530238 | 30.43107733 | 0.407980262 | 4.457120203 | 8.022816365 | ||
| G | 392 | 132.1821753 | 131.7858141 | 131.9839947 | 29.56441482 | 0.396361179 | 4.330183554 | 7.794330397 | ||
| G# | 415.3 | 128.4206792 | 128.0355973 | 128.2281383 | 28.72310297 | 0.385081966 | 4.206959917 | 7.57252785 | ||
| A | 440 | 124.7640862 | 124.3899689 | 124.5770275 | 27.90525416 | 0.374117314 | 4.087172819 | 7.356911074 | ||
| A# | 466.16 | 121.2127839 | 120.8493155 | 121.0310497 | 27.11095513 | 0.363468386 | 3.970834963 | 7.147502933 | ||
| B | 493.88 | 117.7620097 | 117.4088888 | 117.5854492 | 26.33914062 | 0.353120902 | 3.857790328 | 6.944022591 | ||
| C5 | 523.25 | 114.4092951 | 114.0662276 | 114.2377613 | 25.58925854 | 0.34306746 | 3.747958049 | 6.746324489 | ||
| C# | 554.37 | 111.1516894 | 110.8183902 | 110.9850398 | 24.86064892 | 0.333299211 | 3.641241465 | 6.554234636 | ||
| D | 587.33 | 107.9878354 | 107.6640233 | 107.8259294 | 24.15300818 | 0.323812085 | 3.537596108 | 6.367672994 | ||
| D# | 622.25 | 104.9140073 | 104.5994124 | 104.7567098 | 23.465503 | 0.314594911 | 3.436899929 | 6.186419871 | ||
| E | 659.29 | 101.9242874 | 101.6186575 | 101.7714725 | 22.79680983 | 0.305629944 | 3.338959071 | 6.010126327 | ||
| F | 698.46 | 99.02507008 | 98.72813372 | 98.8766019 | 22.14835883 | 0.296936357 | 3.243983002 | 5.839169404 | ||
| F# | 739.99 | 96.20618711 | 95.91770345 | 96.06194528 | 21.51787574 | 0.28848366 | 3.151638625 | 5.672949524 | ||
| G | 783.99 | 93.46750861 | 93.18723714 | 93.32737287 | 20.90533152 | 0.280271465 | 3.061921682 | 5.511459028 | ||
| G# | 830.61 | 90.80658651 | 90.53429408 | 90.67044029 | 20.31017863 | 0.27229243 | 2.974751978 | 5.354553561 | ||
| A | 880 | 88.22153138 | 87.95699049 | 88.08926094 | 19.73199445 | 0.264540889 | 2.890067616 | 5.202121709 | ||
| A# | 932.33 | 85.70992178 | 85.4529122 | 85.58141699 | 19.17023741 | 0.257009582 | 2.807789271 | 5.054020688 | ||
| B | 987.77 | 83.26989409 | 83.02020117 | 83.14504763 | 18.62449067 | 0.249692921 | 2.727855893 | 4.910140608 | ||
| C6 | 1046.5 | 80.89958838 | 80.65700305 | 80.77829571 | 18.09433824 | 0.242585327 | 2.650206552 | 4.770371794 | ||
| X | #DIV/0! | #DIV/0! | #DIV/0! | #DIV/0! | #DIV/0! | #DIV/0! | #DIV/0! |
The important part to note is the lengths that I obtained with the 2 formulas. With this info I just need to buy the pipe, sandblast the coating off it, and cut it to the rough length. Then with the help of an electronic tuner I have to just fine tune them. Unfortunately the estimated cost to produce one set of chimes appears to be around $600. So this will all have to wait till I have more cash. Right now I'm thinking that I will sell them for around $1,000 - $1,500. If you're interested let me know.
**I'll probably never get around to this but there's some good info so I'll leave it (2010)
Special Thanks:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/hframe.html
http://www.metalwebnews.com/howto/wchime/wchime.html
To the authors of these 2 pages: Your sites made this project possible