Here’s the latest project completed: an A/D set made from Tx Ebony and Osage Orange. The Osage was cut in Katy, TX a few years ago and the Tx Ebony I’ve had for a few years. I’ve never made a combination like this and I’m pleased with how it looks. Tx Ebony is a real pain to work with because the tree doesn’t yield a lot of good wood. Matt Willis of the Killdares has a set made of my best stock of this wood with Axis antler mounts. That set turned out beautifully but it took many more hours to turn because I ended up rejecting quite a few pieces in the middle of production. 

I’m going to Houston tomorrow and taking this set with me to play for a few days before sending it to the customer. I hope to put up a video soon but I’m going to be in the car all day tomorrow making the 16 hour drive. Hopefully I’ll be there in time for the Houston session at the Mucky Duck! 

More to come…

Here’s a new bag being tested for a customer in VT. I’m paranoid about leather right now after having gotten a side of porous stuff that I thought would be fixed with some gannaway seasoning. That stuff worked for a while but I need bags that don’t require as much maintenance as Highland pipe bags. I’ll take another picture in an hour to see how this holds  up.

I made a practice chanter for a friend of mine and didn’t like the way the sole turned out so I cut it off, then couldn’t decide what material to use for the sole so I made three of them and put cork on the tenon joint so they could be interchanged. At this point in my career I need to get a better camera or figure out how to get higher resolution pictures out of the one I have because the figuring in the boxwood elder burl sole is beautiful. The other two off to the side are blackwood and olive. 

I made all the joints of this practice chanter fitted with cork because it compresses while maintaining tension and allows the wood to move a bit without cracking. The ferrule is sterling silver from my smallpipe silver supply. 

I got back from Pennsic a few days ago and am finishing up some odds and ends while making the next set of smallpipes from osage orange. I’m getting into some pewter casting as part of the decoration on a Highland pipe chanter but I’m not going to show pictures of that until I get something worth looking at. There is a jewelry making school here in Asheville and I’m scheduled to go in for a casting lesson in the next couple of weeks so I can (hopefully) cast some rods for the sterling drone switch I’m making this month. 

cocobolo with interchangeable soles

I found this piece of wood in Texas last year and thought it would make a crazy looking great pipe. I’ve got the olive chanter and a maple drone and a mesquite blowpipe so… how about a drone out of boxelder? I didn’t think it would look quite this much like something else but that’s the wood folks. That’s the real color and I haven’t put any finish on it whatsoever. I just thought this would be a neat experiment.

Here are two tunes written by a friend of mine named Richard Kean: St Vincent’s Reel and Café Aviño. I don’t know who St Vincent was but Café Aviño was a coffee shop in the Montrose area of Houston where we used to play tunes around 1999 and 2000.  Richard and I might be playing these tunes at the Teribus show on Sept 2nd at the Mucky Duck in Houston. Blackwood ivory smallpipes video 1 

Last night I finished two chanters for Richard and I to play in Teribus. I’d like to get a drone done but not sure if there’ll be time. At least we’ve got bags and chanters now. 

Finally back in the workshop after the weekend with Clandestine in Tx and competing at the Grandfather Mt Highland Games last weekend. I won the Pro Strathspey and Reel contest! That just makes me want to practice harder.I’ve got a very interesting set due at the beginning of next month made from blackwood with mammoth ivory mounts and here’s a picture of the bellows panels with some of the blackwood connectors roughly placed. The screw heads on the inlet will be covered with nickel nail heads at the end of the project and there will be a blackwood humidifier cap in the bottom of the other panel.The bags shown are going to be going on two medieval inspired sets to be played at the Pennsic event in early August and I’m working on a couple of olive wood chanters like the one I made earlier but with plainer ends.The band Teribus has an album in the printing presses now to be released at Pennsic and then at McGonigel’s Mucky Duck on Tuesday Sept 2nd and we’ll probably be playing these two bags and the two new chanters as well as some new drones.   

I guess the blog isn’t very useful if one doesn’t write to it as things are completed. I just returned from a few days in Utah but before I went I finished all the components of the two sets of pipes. All the wooden pieces, the mounts, the silver polished, everything. Now I just have to assemble them and play, play, play, until I go to Texas to deliver one of them to a fellow piper in Austin. The other will have to go in the mail when I get back. I’m a tiny bit behind schedule but only by about a week. I’ve got two or three sets due in July and I’ve got the whole month to get them done so I’m not too worried.

I did a lot of turning last week and finished the connectors on two sets of pipes due in a few weeks. I’ve got some reeds and bellows made and I’m turning drones and chanters in the next seven days.I just got back from Minnesota playing with a group called Istanpitta and the small Hummelschen bagpipe worked out great.

Here’s the chanter I’m playing. They already think I’m a troublemaker and I didn’t have time to make a black, normal-looking, one so I’m playing this one all weekend. The cap is also a mouth piece if one wanted to play it without the bag. My friend Richard is bringing some wood to the games that I bought last year and might be dry enough for me to make myself a new set of pipes. Pan-galactic-gargle-bagpipes….