Pipemaker Bill Haneman

[uilleannfinlander]

Aand again , anybody playing with his sets? Comments please.

[Thies]

Is Bill really making pipes?!? Sounds more like he’s playing them.

@http://xml.apache.planetmirror.com/batik/whoAreWe.html

Bill Haneman bill.haneman ]at[ ireland.sun.com

Bill Haneman works for Sun Microsystems’ Desktop Enabling Middleware group in Dublin, Ireland, and implemented much of the Batik’s text support (though not SVG Fonts, thanks Bella, Dean, and David!). He is also technical lead for the Gnome Accessibility Project (http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap), an open project to provide an accessibility framework for linux and Solaris™ desktops. A twenty-year veteran of scientific programming and application development, he is a US expatriate who plays traditional Irish music on the uilleann pipes.

[uilleannfinlander]

Cormac Cannon (irish piper) recommended,… and just noticed that he is as " Billh " on this forum.

[MarcusR]

Hi Mikko!

I have a set on order from Bill, so I can’t give you any comments on his work as it is still little more than six months to delivery.
If you’re interested I can let you know exactly why I placed my order with Bill and not one of the others on my list, but I rather do that by PM.
I spent a good six month before I decided who to order from and I took the liberty to ask advice and opinions from quite a few
experienced players and pipe makers.
The response was unambiguous, Bill seems to be well respected both as a maker, player and contributor to the piping community.
Communication and interactions so far has been excellent and I really feel that he understands what I’m looking for in a new set even though I haven’t been able to express it in pipemaking terms.
Send me a PM or mail if you want more info.

/MarcusR

@Thies

Is Bill really making pipes?!? Sounds more like he’s playing them.

He has unofficially been taking orders for a year or so, and I’m sure we will hear a lot more about him as a maker in the future.

/MarcusR

[Harry]

Anything of Bill’s that I have tried (about 4 or 5 chanters and a set or two of drones) has been excellent, or on the verge of being excellent (I must stress that a couple of things were designs/works in progress).

I look forward to seeing/hearing his stuff in good hands.

Regards,

Harry.

[billh]

Uh-oh, I guess my cover is well and truly blown now.

Thanks everyone for the kind words. I’m endeavouring to “do it right”. So far I’m very happy with my C# work, the concert pitch stuff is satisfying but still being tweaked, and I’m pretty comfortable with C chanters. B is in the works and narrow-bore-D is still a work in progress. I prefer doing near-replicas of historic chanters FWIW, in which case I have good models to work from.

I’ll keep you posted,

Bill

[Hans-Joerg]

Bill,
how about posting some pics of some of your products?

[billh]

@Hans-Joerg

Bill,
how about posting some pics of some of your products?

Hmm, was planning to wait until I had put a web site together, etc.

I’ll see what I can do in the meantime.

Bill

[billh]

For now, feel free to visit my ImageStation album, with pictures of recent projects and restoration work.
http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=2117208264

I haven’t posted pics of all sets pending permission from the owners. Believe it or not, I have been tending not to take pictures of the completed sets before parting with them! I really should do a better job of that.

Here are a few from the album:

Two boxwood and antler replacement drones, as part of a set c1790:

Drones from a C# set in ebony and silver, not yet assembled:

Assembled C# drones in pearwood

Here’s a C chanter in pearwood and boxwood;

Concert pitch chanter in ebony and boxwood:

Bass drone for concert pitch:

Bill

[Hans-Joerg]

Lovely jobs! Thanks! There are too few pics of restaurations anyhow and I think more of them should be supplied.
Cheers,
Hans

[Joseph_E_Smith]

Beautiful work Bill, and very true to Coyne design… from what I can see.

[texasbagpiper]

Bill you should show pics more often… I really like your key work on those regulator replacement keys, and the drone stop key… Nice stuff…

[billh]

Thanks Seth.

Actually the top ‘replacement’ key ended up not making the grade, version #2 (below) was selected as more in keeping with the original keywork. #1 is still a viable key shape I suppose.

[texasbagpiper]

The keys look so graceful, I guess I’m doing it the hard way, hack saw and grinding… I need to get a small metal cutting band saw

[billh]

While I am roughing the keys out on a cheap bandsaw with a fine-toothed blade, I am doing most of the work with files. Nothing fancy, just time-consuming I occasionally use some forging techniques, long-term I think hand-forging (as opposed to roughing-out with a saw) is probably the best choice and also is more conserving of material.

Watch those fingers

Bill

[Steampacket]

Yes, some nice looking pipes and parts of pipes there Bill. I’m very impressed.

[Kevin_L_Rietmann]

Sweet looking stuff, Bill. Where do you find your role models, hmmm?

[billh]

@Kevin L. Rietmann

Sweet looking stuff, Bill. Where do you find your role models, hmmm?

(cue theremin track)

Mostly with the assistance of a local medium. Maurice and Denis have been helpful enough, and Michael could go on about himself for hours, but Timothy still won’t talk to me.

Oh, sorry, you said “where”, thought you asked “How?”.

[DMQuinn]

@billh

@Kevin L. Rietmann

Sweet looking stuff, Bill. Where do you find your role models, hmmm?

(cue theremin track)

Mostly with the assistance of a local medium. Maurice and Denis have been helpful enough, and Michael could go on about himself for hours, but Timothy still won’t talk to me.

Oh, sorry, you said “where”, thought you asked “How?”.

Billh: PM me and I’ll give you Tim’s mobile. If you tell him you’re having problems with your spinning wheel, he seems to feel less threatened. He warms up pretty quickly, I’ve found.