Literally boring with a bar made for the purpose. It takes a while to widen the chamber from 1/2″ to 1,1/2″ but the bar leaves a nice smooth surface. 

It helps sometimes to make things in batches, especially the bellows. For the pipes themselves I’ve discovered that it’s too tedious to make multiple sets at a time but it’s enjoyable to make the bags and bellows that way. Here’s a newly finished mainstock with one of four bellows finished last week. 

Another pic

I saw some excellent buskers on the street of Asheville today. It was perfect weather and we all know the warm days are falling off quickly. There were lots of tourists walking around and I thought it would be a good idea to play the latest set of smallpipes in public for a while before sending them off on Monday. This set is made of Osage orange with antler mounts in the key of D and they made me ten bucks on Lexington street today just before Mela Indian restaurant opened. I got to explain to a lot of people what the Scottish smallpipes were and play a lot of dance tunes as well as some of the light music I’m competing with next year. The pipes worked like a charm and I’ll take them to the Irish session tomorrow night at Jack of the Wood pub before sending them off on Monday, finally. I asked my first tipper to take my picture. 

I took this picture from the air on the way back from Austin this weekend. Going out of town to play the pipes is a big change of pace from making them and it’s hard to get back into the groove of woodturning all day. My current set to be finished is a set of Osage orange/antler pipes and the drones are still not done. I did some starting on the next set, a blackwood/antler set but I’ve got to finish these osage pipes before I really get going on them. Today I did a lot of practicing for the Winter Storm in January. I’ve got to learn four piobaireachds from the silver medal list and I’ve just about got them. This coming up weekend is the Celtic Classic.

I’ve had the privilege to come to the Texas Capitol for the last three days to play flute and smallpipes on the Scottish singing legend, Ed Miller’s new CD “Lyrics of Gold”. This picture is the view from the taco bar where I’ve eaten almost every meal and you can see the capitol building in the distance. 

It turns out that the producer of Ed’s project, Rich Brotherton, will be playing with the Robert Earl Kean Band at LEAF this October in Asheville. I’ll be there singing along to every song as loud as I can.

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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…

Well after an hour with 8 pounds of plaster perched on top the bag has lost a little bit of air but it’s just at the point where one would think about pumping the bellows. I think it’s good. 

Here are some mount samples clockwise from the top: Axis antler, Osage orange, Tx ebony, olive, cocobolo, boxelder burl.

I have to thank Mr M. for giving me a nudge to get more out of the camera. When I get some time I’ll build a special box with lights to improve the quality of pictures but this is just poking around the camera menu to get better closeups. 

The antler, the osage orange, and the Tx ebony are all from Texas. I don’t know where  exactly the others are from besides the continent. Cocobolo from S. America, Olive from Africa, and Boxelder Burl from N. America.

I’m making a set of pipes from the Osage this week and the bag and bellows are almost done along with the last big batch of chanter reeds so it’s just the turning that remains.

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