uilleann pipes plan

[DMQuinn]

This is a personal bugaboo of mine. I do not have the skills, tools or time to build a chanter, but what I want to understand is how a chanter, and ultimately the reed, varies from a straight cylinder. I want to understand the relationship of the chanter length, diameter, bore shape, hole sizes, hole depths and locations, etc. to the overall design of the chanter.

Many of us are trying to understand these things. Like a lot of other challenging concepts, it seems the more you get into it, the more aware you become of the subtleties and complexities.

It really bothers me that I should have to make hundreds of reeds to get one that works, and make even more to make one that works well. It is an offense to my sensibilities that no-one can predict how a reed should be sized and shaped to match any particular chanter design (sounds pretty pompous of me, I know, but that's basically how I feel).

I hope you are keeping good records. There's going to be a lot of data to stay on top of.

I am thinking that if I can get enough real measurements of real working chanters, I should be able to correlate the differences in design against a straight cylinder to find and quantify the variables in a reed's make-up so that, knowing what the key measurements of any chanter are, I should be able to come up with a reed design for each chanter that will be pretty close, with any differences being mainly caused by a particular piece of cane. I would, of course publish this info for general use if I can ever make any sense of all this.

djm

It's a worthy ambition, and I wish you the best of luck with it. Several years ago, many of us were looking to Craig Fischer to be the first to make it back with the flag. He collected scads of data on bores and reeds with a view to coming up with and publishing a unifying theory. Last I heard from him, he was attempting to build models (i.e. copies) of the instruments he was using to illustrate the theory, and my impression at the time (this would have been four or more years ago, now) was that the number of chanters he was working on was something like 20 to 50. So, twenty to fifty different sets of reamers, and twenty to fifty well-fitted reeds. Craig had (has) a deeper understanding of acoustics than I have, but I have never been able to come up with a satisfactory instrument on the first try just going by a set of numbers. If the numbers came from another source besides my own or BK's measurements, there were always questions of tolerance and feel, so you can imagine how iffy the whole project could become. And here was Craig feeling as if he ought to actually do what he was going to write about. It's no wonder the project is still beyond the horizon.

Believe me, I am all for having more people looking into the problems we face with the pipes: what characteristics of the bore make for the kind of tone and performance that we want? what are the variables in the reeds that make them work well or prevent them from working well? I think the more people who delve into this, the more generally it will be accepted that it is a complicated business. The more you demand of the instrument, the more subtle it will seem to you. Life is certainly easier when you don't really know what is good, or even what you want.




These are a couple of pictures of the "Wall of Shame" at the East Montpelier workshop, insulated from the winds of winter with enlarged print-outs of bore graphs of a few of the chanters we measured. Did I mention that there was a lot of data to stay on top of?

[djm]

Gee, and here's me with the attention span of a gnat. I feel so much better.

Thx,

djm

[fancypiper]

I think you might possibly understand them if you happen to find a gold ring that belongs to one of the good folk........

All else is wasted effort.

DMQ, among a few others is one of the pipe makers that hasn't made one of the good folk mad at him, but hasn't found the pot or ring to ransom for perfect understanding..

I loved playing Bernard's C set you made for him after I could talk him into letting me touch it.

If we both worked at it, we could make some wild music with him playing chanter and me the regs, getting all sorts of impossible chords.

Do the good folk have 3 hands, I wonder?

[Lorenzo]

Excellent post, David. Speaking of subtleties, when I was working in a violin makers shop, years ago, there was always discussion of the master makers of old. I remember one symphony conductor coming in and saying he could usually tell if an old Italian violin was an original hand crafted, or a later reproduction, w/o even playing it. He laid his old vintage Guarneri violin on the counter, laying it on edge, on it's side, and demonstrated how it rocked. He said none of the old handmade ones were perfect. Even the tops were graduated according to the piece of wood being scraped. No two were exactly alike.

It's said that Stradivarius would scrape the spruce tops down to a rough-in, and graduate the wood by tapping on it till it resonated a certain tone (sympathetic vibrations).

Setting and sizing the soundpost is another art in itself with violins. No two sound posts are set exactly the same...you can't go by numbers. You tune it in to where it produces the right harmonics, lightly touching the E string higher up and bowing properly (for one method).

There's a parallel in there somewhere with making pipes and reeds and getting the right combinations. These mysteries are often confounding and not for just any person who has entered this religious pipe order but not yet taken the final vows.

[texasbagpiper]

This thread came up in the Amateur Bagpipe makers group, It's an interesting read...

[rgouette]

Thanks John

The Childress measurements are appreciated. Actually I should have a Childress D chanter arriving fairly soon.

Bruce rocks, as is again evidenced by his gentlmanly response to the whole sharing of plans thing.

I have a Childres practice set I've ben fooling with since 2001(original reed actually...)
Drones are on order for 2007.

cheers all!