Kinds of wood for Uilleann Pipes

Tony · Post by **Tony** » Wed Nov 05, 2003 2:17 pm

I'm sure much of it is the photo variances, but I've seen a lot of different colors for mopane.

Said to be the second hardest wood in Africa

How do you pronounce it... MO-pawn-e or moe-PAIN ?

fancypiper · Post by **fancypiper** » Wed Nov 05, 2003 2:53 pm

Our fluter has a Casey Burns mopane flute and that is the heaviest wood I have ever seen. It is almost as heavy as my M & E flute!

Hers was the color of the first photo when she got it, now it is a reddish tinged brown, sort of a dark auburn if it were hair.

marcpipes · Post by **marcpipes** » Wed Nov 05, 2003 5:02 pm

I had heard mo-PAH-nay.
Marc

Brian Lee · Post by **Brian Lee** » Wed Nov 05, 2003 6:34 pm

Has anyone tried Snakewood? Rogge is the only maker I see who shows it in his gallery. Looks AWESOME but after a bit of digging - found out the stuff seems to be pretty difficult to work in. Someone just sold a snakewood thin weasel over on the whistle board too.

sturob · Post by **sturob** » Wed Nov 05, 2003 8:20 pm

I haven't tried working it, but I've got a snakewood 1/2 set by Rogge. It's DENSE stuff. Very nice looking.

I think you should pick a timber within reason that you find attractive. If you think pipes have to be black, then you'll probably move towards ebony, blackwood, and dark cocobolo. If you are more open, there are a lot of choices.

I really feel like the most striking difference between timbers is between families, rather than individual species. So, I feel like rosewoods tend to sound the same way, boxwood is boxwood, and cocus (a legume) is cocus.

I also don't really think koa is a great choice because it's so light, comparatively speaking. It's nice-looking, though. Interestingly, I just googled "koa wood," and almost every entry is for websites selling koa wood picture frames.

Stuart

anima · Post by **anima** » Wed Nov 05, 2003 9:27 pm

I read somewhere that snakewood can get brittle over time - anyone else heard this?

djm · Post by **djm** » Wed Nov 05, 2003 9:34 pm

Any wood can get brittle if not cared for. A bit of oil once a year should probably be sufficient, unless you live in a desert.

Kevin L. Rietmann · Post by **Kevin L. Rietmann** » Wed Nov 05, 2003 11:11 pm

A local rare wood dealer packs a disclaimer with all ebony and snake they ship, saying that the wood musn't be exposed to extremes of humidity and temperature when freshly worked or it will crack.

The Sporting Pitchfork · Thu Nov 06, 2003 7:53 pm

Brian Lee wrote:Has anyone tried Snakewood? Rogge is the only maker I see who shows it in his gallery. Looks AWESOME but after a bit of digging - found out the stuff seems to be pretty difficult to work in. Someone just sold a snakewood thin weasel over on the whistle board too.

Yeah, Rogge makes snakewood sets. Fergus Maunsell has a lovely looking C set in snakewood. There's pictures of it in one of the old threads and on Patrick D'Arcy's site. It's hard to see the striations in the wood from those photos though.

A few years back, I was hangin' out at Cillian O Briain's workshop and he and his little helper Maurice had just completed a gorgeous snakewood mainstock...which immediately cracked. I don't think he's tried working with it since. Too hard to work with, he said. Then again, Cillian makes a lot of his pipes in boxwood, so go figure...

marcpipes · Post by **marcpipes** » Fri Nov 07, 2003 12:01 am

Try this: http://www.cocoboloinc.com
This is a nice site listing the properties of certain Central and South American hardwoods. It lists some of the working properties and weight per cubic foot.

Fergmaun · Post by **Fergmaun** » Wed Nov 12, 2003 4:14 pm

The weight of my 3 Rogge chanters including the keys brass is
The C snakewood chanter is at 330 grams
The D ebony chanter is at 245 grams
The B plumwood Chanter is at 225 grams

My Rogge full C is made from snakewood brass artificial ivory
The Rogge B Chanter is made from plumwood brass boxwood
The Rogge D Chanter is made from ebony brass artificial ivory (this chanter for sale at the end of January 2004)

Bye for now

stew · Post by **stew** » Mon Nov 17, 2003 8:34 pm

My choice,
Madagascan rosewood, or Dalbergia Maritima
the king of pipe woods, as far as I'm concerned,
you can't get any better timber than this for Uilleanns.

Piipeman · Post by **Piipeman** » Tue Nov 18, 2003 1:30 am

who['s dalberg, friend of yrs

wow wood shold be good and hard and why not hard as money buys so why not Plastic? cant be any harder less you make a pipe out of cancrete

that would rock

hey it sez party!

djm · Post by **djm** » Tue Nov 18, 2003 7:57 am

Plastic is, in fact, better than wood for most woodwinds - to a point. On the plus side, it doesn't shrink, crack or split. On the negative side, it doesn't resonate the same as wood, so you would lose some subtle shadings off the timbre, and it costs more than wood to set up an injection mold, which would be necessary to make it worth the trouble. It goes without saying that you must start off with a good overall design, so I won't say it.

djm

Tony · Post by **Tony** » Tue Nov 18, 2003 8:03 am

Plastics don't necessarily require injection molding. There are several flutemakers turning Delrin (Acetal) much the way wood is worked.