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.

Well the pipes are all packed up and I just wanted to upload this video of the D chanter before going to the post office. This was a fun project to make a set with Mammoth ivory but it was expensive and time consuming as I worried over such a precious material. I played them all day long yesterday, the day before, and this morning so I’ve got a lot of hours on them.Blackwood Mammoth Ivory D chanter  

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 

I played them for a few hours last night and got the drones and the A chanter pretty well set. Some video to follow. 

This is the first time I’ve worked with any kind of ivory, in this case mammoth ivory from Siberia, and I love the way the project has turned out. Making one-off sets of pipes is a fun way to do it and after spending all week last week and most of the weekend I’m getting into the assembly and playing stage. Today it’s off to the store for some cotton thread to be beeswaxed and used for the joints of this set, then play them all week to be sent off on Friday. I’ll upload some closeups later in the week when I get the silver put on.  

Finally the A chanter is done with the ivory mount. I made the sole and chanter separately and it attaches with hemp so that the tension can be adjusted if either piece should move. I’m very excited about how this project is turning out.

I finished the connectors last night and am cutting the holes on the mainstock today with a new jig I finished this morning. In this case the jig is a device for holding the mainstock rather than a dance tune but it holds the piece very steadily so that makes me feel like dancing. The picture below is of the connectors pre-silver ferrules to be added later and some little blocks of fossil ivory from mammoth tusks thousands of years old. The fossil ivory was a little more expensive than I budgeted but it’ll be worth it to have a chance to work with the stuff.  

I cut silver tonight and ordered some of a different size yesterday. There are three different sizes of silver tube on a set of my smallpipes and it has been four years since I ordered in and now I’m almost out of the small size I use for the drones. Four years ago silver was around $7 an oz. Now it’s around $18 so needless to say I was pretty shocked that the minimum order is now $1250. The stuff below is the biggest size I use on the stock that ties into the bag. I’ve still got plenty of that thank goodness.  

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.