The more time goes on, the more I figure out how to make these things better. This is the best one yet and it’s going to a good home in a beautiful part of Arkansas. The bellows is cherry.

I am extremely grateful to the person who is paying me to learn how to do new things. When I talk to this person about certain techniques, like “oh, you just pour the molten pewter onto the chanter and then turn the shape true”, it seems so easy, so straightforward. There are about a score of steps that lead me to even get to this point and I think I know what to do now but I’m out of time. I’ve got to go to Texas tomorrow, it’s 3:30 AM and I need to pack. This will have to wait until April.

Who wants to see a boring completed project anyway? .Let’s see some late night pipe-maker blood.

This is eventually going to be a beautiful chanter with a silvery band between the E and D tone holes, seemingly impossibly fit between the sole and bulb. Not my idea but trust me it’s going to be awesome. It’s going to drive me crazy to have to leave this on the shelf for a month.

There are little pieces of tin everywhere in the workshop. Imagine molten metal being poured onto a spinning lathe.

I’m not that stupid, I just want you to imagine it.  There are pieces of tin everywhere though.

I can’t find my “good” camera so the iPhone will have to do for now. One of my first smallpipe customers (he has #3) commissioned a set of Border pipes that would look at home in the 18th century. Luckily there’s a museum across the Atlantic called the Morpeth Chantry where some very old bagpipes were photographed and uploaded to the internet by Richard and Anita Evans, very good pipemakers themselves. This set is modeled after set #48. I’m grateful to the Evans’ for providing these pictures on their Flikr account. Some of their sets of smallpipes were being played at the Piper’s Gathering in 2009 and they had a very high quality sound.

I’ll hasten to say that this instrument was “inspired by” the bagpipe #48 rather than intended to be an exact replica. It would be impossible for me to make a replica since I’ve never seen the original in person and I can’t claim to advance anyone’s knowledge of history through the bagpipe I’ve just completed, only that I made a pipes in a similar aesthetic and out of what I believe to be the same materials. The old pipes are reported to be from the 18th century and made of sycamore and ivory. I worked from a picture and incorporated modern measurements while walking the line between wanting to make it look old and trying to resist putting in too much of my own lines.

The chanter and drones’ internal dimensions are the ones I’ve been working on for the last couple of years and they continue to evolve but I’m happy with the way they sound right now.

It was a great month for learning new things. I had a couple of different bagpipes in the workshop for repair and I completed some important projects as well. The photo below is from about a week ago and since then I’ve just about finished the two bagpipes pictured. I’ll upload the new pictures soon but for the last week I’ve had a work table covered in various bagpipe parts.

In this picture:

-finished blackwood drones for a friend in Arkansas

-silver ferrules

-brass ferrules

-wood finishing experimental samples

-a rubber mold for making tin frogs (A.D.D.)

-a stand of sycamore drones for an 18th century inspired project

-two tin soles and bulbs for Highland chanters

Later I’ll take pictures of the completed pipes. It snowed all day yesterday so the light is going to be great when the sun rises.

Well I got it back in the mail last week because I wanted to make another one and rather than do all the machining on the pewter all over again I thought I would try doing some more casting.  I discovered that there is a community of folks out there who like to cast and paint pewter figurines and tin soldiers. So much so that there is a small industry devoted to the hobby.

Basically I’m trying to recreate the aesthetic of a bagpipe chanter based on this painting:

I didn’t realize at first how involved this was going to be. I learned that pewter describes many different alloys but that the main ingredient is tin. Straight tin is a good casting material but it’s expensive so lead is added. I tried turning some of this leaded pewter and discovered that it didn’t turn well but created a lot of dust. That’s right: now I had leaded dust flying through the workshop into the air.  I got out a new vacuum bag, cleaned up every spec of dust and sent the unused leaded pewter back. I ordered the more expensive “lead-free” alloy which turns out to be mostly tin and tried again. This time the metal came off the edge like beautiful silvery butter. I had to figure out how to cast a round shape to start with and that took a lot of trial and error but I eventually got two cylinders close enough that I could make the shapes above.

Not wanting to go through quite as much trouble as last time I decided to try to cast the shape  using some room temperature, two-part, mold-making, rubber. It is really a shame that we don’t have tin casting in school because this was so much fun to do. Basically you take roughly equal handfuls of Quick-Sil mold making material (play dough) and you’ve got about 5 minutes to knead the two parts together and press in your original. I took off the pewter chanter sole above and in about 20 minutes I had a rubber mold. After quite a bit of trial and error I eventually found you really do have to coat the inside of the mold with talcum powder and got something I think I can clean up on the lathe in no time.

More to come…

I’ve been so busy lately there’s been no time to write on the blog. It’s in the last week before going to Texas for a St Patrick’s Day tour and this month there are two projects for piper friends in Arkansas and Washington DC: a set of smallpipes and a historically inspired set of Border pipes.

Since it’s time for the North Texas Irish Festival soon I thought I’d better have a good supply of reeds for the smallpipes, border chanters, a friend’s Brueghel pipes, and a couple of rauschephiffes. This batch of reeds was made over a few days two weeks ago and left to settle while I did the bulk of the turning for the last couple of bagpipes.

On the Teribus website Richard and I are playing the Brueghel pipes with my chanter and the Texas Saloon pipe with the same chanter design. Basically it’s a Highland chanter in A set up with a custom reed to play loud or quiet, bellows or mouth-blown, and made to look the part.

On the picture below some of the reeds were made with French cane and some with California cane from Sampson Co.

There’s a big instructional weekend planned in a few days near the Washington DC area and it would be a great place for anyone with a set of smallpipes to go learn some new tunes and get one on one help refining their skills. There will be some good players and probably a maker or two as well.

http://upmw.smad.us/squeezethebag/

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=224588259516

Here’s the new chanter set up to play with some of my smallpipe drones. You could call it a Border chanter but it’s really an A Highland chanter with a very quiet reed. I’m making these on request and they can be made to play loud, in a GHB, or quiet, in a set of border or smallpipe drones. It’s not meant to be a historical reproduction, just a chanter on which someone with Great Highland Bagpipe experience can play with other instruments.

I wrote a 5/8 bagpipe duet and don’t know what it’ll end up being used for but here it is, played on this chanter, double tracked, but without any reverb or effects:

ejs-58-alt3

Today was warm so I took this picture outside. I’ve got another set of smallpipes to make this month as well as some A chanters and a set of reproduction border pipes.

It is good to be back in the workshop after a couple of weeks on the road.

I was keeping an eye out for this scene and found it on highway 87 on the way to San Angelo.