All Uilleann Pipes, All the Time

Thanks for weighing in, Geoff. I confess to having guessed when I said less than one degree in the bass reg bend. It could have been more, I didn't measure it. It's also true that my regs had a bit less splay than yours. My main goal was to reduce the gap between bass and baritone regs, using a tape...

Actually the splayed 'dog leg' bass regulator can be done with the wooden tenon method - since less than a degree is generally required. It requires bending the regulator tube with two mandrels, but I have done it with good results. The resulting kink in the bass bar was/is very hard to spot, and th...

I should add, to comment on the stock cup, that most of the surviving examples of mid-19th century stock cups which I've seen have been made of horn. They didn't seem to be tapered, but I don't know of anyone making horn stock cups today. The timber or metal cups which I've encountered have seemed t...

Anyone who has rolled a few ferrules can tell you that it's easier to roll a tapered ferrule. Fitting a few will also convince a person that a tapered ferrule makes it easier to achieve and maintain a tight fit to the stock and binding, whether bound purely with thread, or thread plus shellac. So th...

Thanks Bill The throat of the c chanter appears to angle in more than the others just below the throat, and the throat also seems closer in diameter to the C sharp than the b. Do you think this is the way it was intended, maybe made with a different throat reamer? Well a lot of time has passed sinc...

Actually, the C and C sharp chanters shown on the tone hole placement graph in the lecture seem to both have throats of about 3.9 mm. Does this mean that a Bb chanter of the same design parameters might have a throat that's the same size as the B, which is 3.7? Interestingly enough, the Coyne narro...

Maybe the pipe makers would have had cane available to them since they mostly worked in centers of commerce, but the pipers in the countryside making their own reeds would have had to use elder. That seems quite likely. I also suspect that the elder reed tradition may have been passed down from the...

Thanks for all the info Bill, I suppose I have a bit more graphing to do! If the throats of sharper pitched instruments are larger than the throats of their lower pitched counterparts, does this mean that their tone holes will also have to be larger? I don't think that follows, no. Regarding the dr...

The Hannan chanter is doubtless from a different original instrument than the regulators. Note also that the Clancy Coyne regulators are also about the same length and thus probably originally in C. Seems like heresy I know, but the Clancy chanter also does not match the body of the set. The O'Hanni...

Thanks Bill. I have had a great electronic conversation with David Quinn too where the same figures came up. That sort of underlines the 'rightness' of feeling. Cheers! In fairness, my figures would have originally come from David Quinn as well. I did make some lighter springs in earlier days, and ...

Hi Seamus, Directly under toneholes there will often be a very slight enlargement that is in fact caused by the presence of the holes themselves. In these narrow bore pipes they are generally small enough to be ignored. I am not sure that I understand specifically which bore perturbations you are re...

Sorry for the delayed reply. I generally use something under 23 mm for these narrow reeds. I have used as small as 17 mm (!) but something around 20-21 seems ideal. It depends a bit on the cane stiffness. I would not worry about centerline thickness provided the elevation of the lips is suitable whe...

I start with the same staple and slip dimensions. I may make small adjustments as I go, depending on the chanter, but often find that I can literally swap reeds between pitches to good effect. Generally B flat seems to like a slightly wider reed, say 11.0 mm rather than 10.5-10.7. But yes, B and C# ...

I think it bears pointing out that with the right staple (and, sometimes, a 'reasonable' rush), many Rowsome chanters can and do play in tune at A=440. Very few makers (if any) make accurate Rowsome 'copies', so it is far from the case that modern makers can blame Leo for their tuning problems. The ...

Richard: the dimensions given in the 'Reconstructing Chanter Reeds' article are intended for use with a sizeable rush. The others are not. Most people's initial mistake with chanters like this is to make the reeds too hard or stiff. SeamusRua's observations sound about right to me. On some notes, vi...