Apprentice Pipemakers / Pipemaking

[Phil Wardle]

Can I suggest an alternative to a website?

Websites are great, but they have their problems for projects of this kind. Someone mentioned earlier Wikipedia, and I've been thinking that a bagpipe wiki would be an excellent idea for some time.

For those not familiar with the idea, a wiki is basically a website which can be altered by any viewer. It sounds daft (and prone to abuse) but it works extremely well. One of the best known examples is wikipedia.org, which aims to be a complete user-edited encyclopedia. If you get a few people behind it willing to do a lot of refactoring, you can create really impressive information spaces. Certainly it's fascinating looking at the page history of the bagpipe page (for example), watching it grow from somewhat vague commentary to a fairly decent overview. The Uilleann pipes page, however, needs some work, hint, hint.

There are a number of different wiki scripts out there, of varying levels of difficulty. I managed to get UseModWiki running on a local webserver, and I'm not very bright. The Wikipedia script is more difficult, but not impossible, and it is pretty bullet-proof.

I've got some web space and (I think) the ability to run scripts, and I'd be happy to donate it, as the site is doing sweet fa at the moment. I'll have to investigate and see what I can run on it. Hmm.

Cheers,
Calum

Thanks for that Calum. It was indeed I who mentioned Wikipedia. So far my thought have been running along the lines of having fixed articles, photos etc dealing with each aspect of pipemaking (boring, reamer making, selecting wood etc) and then also maybe having a wikipedia type section as well, so that everyone can put in their two cents worth. What we want to avoid though is a situation where the blind are leading the blind; so it will be necessary to fix in place any contributions from experienced makers (so these articles can't be changed), leaving it up to the amateur wannabe makers to chose what's best for them, their abilities and size of wallet. As I've said though, it's very early days, and things will no doubt change as we see how well they work.

Thanks also for the offer of webspace. I have ten meg on my own ISP to start with, and someone else has also very kindly offered me the use of an extra 100 megs....the more the merrier. I'm working on a rough draft of the homepage now..I expect something to be up in a week or so.

I must say that I have been encouraged by the support and positive comments I have received after so short a time. Thanks all!

Cheers, Phil.

edited to clarify point about "fixing" articles by established makers...I didn't mean to infer that they should be "improved".

[The Sporting Pitchfork]

Not to steer this interesting thread off course, but does anybody have an update on what Caoimhin O'Raghallaigh has been up to lately? Has he knocked out any more sets? Is he actually taking orders now or is he still dipping his toe in the water with this whole pipemaking thing?

I certainly hope that he takes the plunge and goes for it full-time. I have a feeling once word started going around, his order book would fill up very fast.

[Kevin L. Rietmann]

Regarding websites that look into historical instruments in a very in-depth way, this is a great one: http://www.oldflutes.com/

Rick Wilson's Historical Flutes Page. Fantastic! This guy has heaps of flutes and has analyzed every last little detail about them. A really wonderful bit of work - an equivalent page for the Irish pipes would be a great thing.

As it stands a page of URLs and thumbnails would be a step in the right direction. Most of them pointing towards Pat D'Arcy land, natch!

[rorybbellows]

If you cant figure it out for yourself you probably wouldnt be any good anyway

[Rick]

If i understand this thread correctly, a pipemaker who has spent the best part of 20 years researching and refining making pipes has to tell a complete stranger what he discovered through hard work?
Not likely is it?

[DMQuinn]

If i understand this thread correctly, a pipemaker who has spent the best part of 20 years researching and refining making pipes has to tell a complete stranger what he discovered through hard work?
Not likely is it?

Likely enough, I reckon. Reference has already been made to articles published by Geoff Wooff and Craig Fischer in Ceol na hEireann. Add to that various other articles by those two and many more in the Sean Reid Society journal, the NPU journal, the Seattle Pipers' Club magazine, and its precursor out of San Francisco, going back 30 years or so (as long as I've been keeping track of such things) and you have already available a substantial body of information freely given. Just to drop a few more names, I can immediately think of articles in print on hard-won technical aspects of reedmaking and/or pipemaking by Alain Froment, Cilian O Briain, John Hughes, Ted Anderson, Benedict Koehler, Pat Sky, Breandan Ring, Malcolm McLaren, Hans-Joerg Podworny, and Phil Wardle. (My apologies to any of these whose names I have misspelled, and to others slighted by omission.) I am certain that after a couple hours of digging through the archives we could double that list, or better. I don't mean to say that all secrets have been revealed, or that all mysteries have been cracked. Still, if we only consider the printed word, there is already a healthy tradition a-building of the sharing of technical information.

We could also look at the great quantities of information already freely available on the Internet. I'd rather not, since so much of it is cockamamie nonsense that doesn't hold up in practice, and some of it is downright dangerous. What Phil seems to be suggesting is a compilation over which he or someone else might hold at least some degree of editorial discretion, and I think that alone would make it worth doing, in contrast to the open fora where anyone may submit anything and expect to have it taken seriously.

If I publish the exact bore dimensions of a chanter I make, along with the tone hole data and a recipe for a reed, anyone who wants to "steal" it still has to do the work of making the necessary reamers, and actually spending the hours in the workshop to make the bloody thing. More power to him, I say. The more amateurs who take a whack at pipemaking, the better. There will be that many more folks who will have an understanding of why the professionals must charge the insanely high prices we charge to keep us in polo ponies and golf shoes.

[Patrick D'Arcy]

If i understand this thread correctly, a pipemaker who has spent the best part of 20 years researching and refining making pipes has to tell a complete stranger what he discovered through hard work?
Not likely is it?

It is very likely. I think a select few pipemakers are very aware of their mortality and want to share what they have learned before it's too late. What's the point in spending a lifetime rediscovering what the old masters did if you bring it to the grave with you. The tradition is strong now and by passing this knowledge on it will only get stronger. The begrudgery of knowledge is better left in the dark ages and Vatican 1.

Patrick.

[Jim McGuire]

What secrets are there when a completed set is sold?

We have all of the historical examples available to everyone. Historical sets and historical reeds that still work. O'Flynn is still playing his Leo Rowsome reed, for instance. Drone reeds still operate in some sets for over 50 years.

Materials and sourcing of the same is unparalleled. Access to general info like woodturning techniques, instrument making techniques, metalworking techniques, leather, etc has never been better.

Ireland is accessible and performers from there travel out for piping weekends. I paid $900 RT to fly to Ireland in 1978; I paid $286 (total) for RT in 1999; pop that into the Time Value of Money engine! (Also, I used to take the boat/train RT to London from Dublin but now can only imagine it as airfares are so cheap.)

I have heard of people not sharing 'secrets' but that untenable position erodes over time. By and large, Irish music is a very accessible scene - one has access and can approach virtually every performer and craftsman.

Geoff did not seek out his 'apprentice'; the apprentice/associate asked Geoff if they could work something out. Others have had apprentice/associate relationships with pipemakers for many weeks/months/years. We've seen a couple of operations start to 'scale up' output in order to meet the seemingly ever growing demand for the instrument.

Printed material is tough to wade through by now on account of its sheer volume.

[Phil Wardle]

If i understand this thread correctly, a pipemaker who has spent the best part of 20 years researching and refining making pipes has to tell a complete stranger what he discovered through hard work?
Not likely is it?

For all the doubting Thomases out there:



This is only day one...the layout and title are nothing like what it will become...but those measurements of my chanter have never been published before and took me twenty years to figure out.

http://home.iprimus.com.au/philip_wardle/

Still want to be a wet blanket?

By the way, now you can all see what an ugly old f*rt I am

Cheers, Phil.

[Phil Wardle]

If you cant figure it out for yourself you probably wouldnt be any good anyway

Yeah, like we all want to waste time reinventing the wheel.

I couldn't figure how to fly a plane until I was shown.

Got a pilots licence now...want me to teach you?

Same with pipes.

Cheers, Phil.

[Lorenzo]

Naugh, dats too easy. Skydiving...now there's just the thing. Learn on your own, and you've got the rest of your life to do it (however short that may be).

[Phil Wardle]

Naugh, dats too easy. Skydiving...now there's just the thing. Learn on your own, and you've got the rest of your life to do it (however short that may be).

I can never figure out why people want to jump out of a perfectly good aeroplane...unless maybe because it's me that is flying it!

By the way, apologies for my grumpy mood before, people....I had a late night, battling with my new ISP, over seeming web publishing software incompatabilities (since resolved); it took one of those "for information on ADSL broadband connections, press 5 then the hash key" phone calls, that had me listening to bloody Vivaldi for ages while waiting for a human bean to answer....and to think I used to like "The Four Seasons" once... :roll:

Cheers, Phil.

[Lorenzo]

We could also look at the great quantities of information already freely available on the Internet. I'd rather not, since so much of it is cockamamie nonsense that doesn't hold up in practice, and some of it is downright dangerous. What Phil seems to be suggesting is a compilation over which he or someone else might hold at least some degree of editorial discretion, and I think that alone would make it worth doing, in contrast to the open fora where anyone may submit anything and expect to have it taken seriously.

Well said! It's just worth repeating and deserves to be pasted at the top of every page!

[Jack Macleod]

why the professionals must charge the insanely high prices we charge to keep us in polo ponies and golf shoes.

I knew it!! Pipe makers do live in the lap of luxury! I bet you're just like Krusty, lighting your Cubans with $100 bills.

[James Connelly]

While measuring,x-raying,copying,etc. is all fine, it's the love of the instrument that makes a good pipe maker. When you've spent hours and hours working to fine tune the chanter and you decide the reeds just not good enough and you've got work backing up on you, and your wife tells you "you can't make any money spending so much time on one instrument" (and you know she's right) and knowing the piper probably can't tell the difference, you tear the chanter apart, check everything over again and start all over,(it ain't the money)