It would make very logical sense, Moof. If we imagined for a moment that I came up with a hair-brained get-rich-quick scheme to flood the lucrative Australian market (er, what?) with my own line of "Aussie" brand tin whistles, would I set up a whole new factory, or simply order a few boxloads of unmarked whistles from whoever is pumping them out wherever? Or probably just send them the artwork, and the dots for Waltzing Matilda to include on the brochure, sit back and wait for the postman.
Interesting to look closely at the only "factory" image we can see on the Feadog website:
At front left, a massive pile of assembled whistles. Note, no labels at this point.
At back of bench, a pile of whistle bodies without heads. Seems reasonable to believe we are at the point where the heads meet their bodies.
In front of the operator, a very solidly constructed fabricated device, presumably a jig to assist in the tube heading process.
Pause for a moment to think. You or I would expect to pop a head on a whistle with a deft flick of the wrist, but that assumes the heads are meant or have later been forced to be detachable. And anyway, what do you call 144 deft flicks of the wrist? Repetitive Strain Injury.
Now, note that there are two ducts running horizontally along the wall at the back of the worksurface. The lower one is for mains power, the upper one for compressed air. At the right hand end, we can see a pressure regulator and a thin tube heading off in the general direction of the tube heading jig. We can see by the regulator gauge that it is pressurised. I'm guessing that the heads are pressed onto the tubes by a small pneumatic ram, the jig providing support and guidance for the parts, and presumably an adjustable end-stop to get the tuning right. Rightish....
Presumably, the job after this one is to whack on the labels, and pop whistles and pamphlets into boxes.
Question: Is popping heads and labels on tubes enough to be characterised as "actually made in Ireland"?
