After purchasing a Gregorian Soprano windchime made by Woodstock Chimes, I was interested in making my own chimes. I essentially reverse engineered the chimes I bought. I learned that the 'note' the tube produced was inversely proportional to the square of its length.

Further investigation eventually yielded a mathematical formula that I could use. This formula was put into a Visual Basic application. To date, I have made about twenty sets of chimes. I have used steel, copper, and aluminum tubing with tubes as small as 4 3/4" long, 3/8" in diameter, to 42" long, and 2 1/2" in diameter.

Making homemade chimes is labor intensive. After determining the notes I want to use, the number of tubes, and the tube material, I use my Visual Basic application WindChime Shop, to compute the data. The wood pieces come next (top disk, middle disk, and pendant). After the wood is sanded and finished, I cut the tubing to length and finish them with steel wool. The chime is then strung together.