OBTAINING A CONCERT PITCH (G) SET OF PIPES

Date: Wed, 07 Oct 1998
From: Shannon Green <shannon@terracom.net>
I am a fiddler who is considering taking the plunge and learning about the NSP. I would love to have any recommendations you have on getting started. I especially would like to know how to get a beginning G set. I am interested in G vs F because I eventually would like to play with others and, as a string player, am not so good at transposingon the fly.
John Liestman recommended I approach Dave Shaw about getting a G set. Does anyone know how to contact him? I can't find him on the NSP web sites.
And, does anyone have other recommendations for who else to contact? Or, have a good but (hopefully) inexpensive G set hanging around needing to be used?

Date: Thu, 08 Oct 1998
From: Simon James <SJAMES@feda.ac.uk>
I had a similar query a few months ago ( now I am joyously partnered with a G chanter) - and a lot of help from people on the list. Did anyone save that correspondence?

From: "John Liestman" <liestman@wt.net>
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1998 04:13:14 –0500
I should clarify that I also recommended some other makers, but that we could easily find out how to contact them. I had lost Dave's address and he is not listed on Julia's website. I hope he is still making???

Date: Thu, 08 Oct 1998
From: Rex Aschenbrenner <aschenbr@cgi.com>
Dave has a page with his phone number at:

http://www.wwram.demon.co.uk/mariesweb/dave.htm
I talked to him in the springtime: he is still making pipes with about a year of backlog.

Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1998
From: Julia Say <Julia.Say@nspipes.demon.co.uk>
There are very few G sets, never mind 'beginning' G sets.
(Dave Shaw’s)His address and phone number are in the list of Scottish smallpipe makers at:
http://www.co.uk/nsp/ww12misc.htm
He did not wish to be included in the makers listing on my pages, for whatever reasons. I understand he now has his own pages, and I'll add a link to them in the next update.
Any of the makers who say they do concert pitch sets. Judge, from a combination of price, and the length of the waiting list, how desirable a particular maker's pipes are - I think thats a reasonable first rule of thumb.
>Or, have a good but (hopefully) inexpensive G set hanging around needing to be used?

There are no such things. No sets of pipes (or at any rate very few), hang around - its a seller's market, and G sets, as opposed to G chanters, are rare beasts at the best of times.

Date: Thu, 08 Oct 1998
From: Shannon Green <shannon@terracom.net>
Yes, to be fair to John L, he did recommend several makers. Dave was the only one I could not find contact info on.
I am dismayed at the thought of waiting year(!) and yet from the sound of the list archives, that is nothing. But remember, you already have sets! As yet, I have nothing.
I have a question about f chanters/g chanters. It is much easier to get an F set. Is it possible to buy an F set, then at some point buy a G chanter and just replace the chanters on your existing set to play in concert pitch? I assume the set would need tuneable drones to go up that nearly half-step when the switch is made? Or, can you just change the fingering on the F's, so that you play in concert pitch (but a little sharp) buy moving fingers up a hole, so to speak? I.e., play everything up a note, to be at/near concert pitch?
Thanks for your patience. Please remember I have only seen pictures of these pipes.

From: Rosspipes@aol.com
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1998
The tradition in NSPiping is to make your own pipes. Get yourself a lathe. Info on wood, tools, and dimensions are available from the NPS. Like the song says "by turning you wil come round right"

Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1998
From: rjs@MBR.centra.ca (Richard Shuttleworth)
Oh God!! There's not much hope for the likes of me then! It's not the wood turning that frightens me, rather the thought of bashing all those spoon handles to try and make keys :-)

From: RTE395@aol.com
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1998
But surely this can't be the ONLY tradition, or RIGHT OF PASSAGE, or there wouldn't be so many Reid sets still circulating, and Joe Hutton wouldn't have been playing the TET set, and Billy Pigg wouldn't have purchased pipes from GGA, and all the pipemaker's children would have gone hungry.

From: "sharon acosta" <sharonacosta@email.msn.com>
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1998 10:50:47 –0400
Since the topic of pipe turning has recently come up, please allow me to forward the following words of advice.
Two weeks ago, I finished restoring an old Gaita Galega I had laying around for years. I purchased a lathe as well as all kinds of other attachments, tools andgadgets necessary to accomplish such task, and the pipes are once again in playing order. The bass drone and chanter are the only two parts left from the original set, everything else is new. The set not only looks beautiful, but sounds beautiful as well.
This is fine and dandy, a great personal satisfaction, but if you are considering building only one set, tooling-up for such endeavour is not worth the expenditure.
Consider the following: A decent wood-turning lathe costs today between $300 and $800 dollars (US dollars) and that is just a bare-bones lathe with no attachments. Add to it a small three-jaw self centering chuck ($150) and a drill chuck ($50) for the tailstock and now you can perform all drilling operations, providing you spend another $50 in a set of long drill bits. To turn wood stock into small and delicate parts, you need a good set of turning tools ($150 to $300) along, of course, with several grades of sharpening stones to keep the turning tools sharp (say another $50).
Now you are tooled-up for production. The nexxt stage is to procure all raw materials; Brazilian Boxwood (in the case of the above-mentioned gaita) for $12 a piece 2"x2"x24" (ebony is twice as expensive); brass tubing of different sizes (here the prices vary greatly) and imitation ivory for $2 an inch.
Now you have the raw materials; the next item to consider is time. Turning a set of pipes takes a long time, specially if you never operated a lathe before, and unlike baseball bats and table legs, a set of pipes requires the utmost precision.
I am not writing this letter with the intent of discouraging anybody, but simply as a word of caution. If you are planning to turn several sets of new pipes, restore old pipes or simply experiment, the above investment might very well be worth while. If you are planning in making only one set, I suggest you contact a reputable pipe maker and use the money as a down-payment on a new set of pipes. I suggest contacting Mike Nelson. Mike has a beautiful set of AutoCAD drawings available on the internet and several step-by-step, very detailed construction articles as well. Study them carefully, determine if you have the required skills, time and money to invest in such endeavour and then decide which way to go.
My second project was going to be a set of Scottish Smallpipes, but I decided instead to purchase a set (second-hand, and preferably in need of restoration) rather than turn one. So if the list knows of an available set, please let me know.

From: Rosspipes@aol.com
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1998
To quote another song, finding a G chanter is like" finding an acre of land between the salt water and the sea strand". Maybe you should take Fernando's advice. I think that most pipemakers children are well fed at the moment with the interest in pipes of all sorts creating such a demand.To continue on with the impossible if you can arrange with the big pipemaker in the sky to give me an extra week I would be pleased to make you a G chanter. But it gets down to what Ged said eventually" una vita e non basta".

From: "Drysdale, Alan" <drysdalea@pgocm5.ksc.nasa.gov>
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1998
I guess it depends on what you start with, but you can cut a lot of corners here. I made a chanter on my grandfather's metal lathe. To get it to run, I had to do a lot of stuff like attach an electric motor (from an old washing machine). Shortly after starting, the spindle carrying the cones broke, so I had to jury rig that too. Things like self centering chucks are not that important. You can buy a dial guage for $15 and use a 4-jaw non self centering chuck. For the tailstock drill, I used a chuck from an old electric drill and made a brass fitting to attach it to the tailstock. I used the metal turning tools that are older than I am, and increased the cutting angles a bit and kept them sharp. I ground them on a wheel grinder (which would probably cost $50 if I didn't already have one), and they worked just fine. I just used regular length drills for most of the drills, and made d-drills as suggested by Mike Nelson for drilling the bore by grinding piano wire of the correct guage. The bore and finger holes a re the most dimensionally critical parts of the chanter, and those are determined by the drill bits. The lathework itself isn't that critical.

I got as far as the chanter (no keys), and ran out of time. I will get back to it one of these days.....