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

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.