have any of you pipers built a set of drones?i built mine along with leather bag,bellows,all stocks and valves and am quiet happy with the sound,stability and and appearence even though they are a bit"unstandard"in materials and methods.i play them with a b.c. childress chanter which i am very pleased with.i did this without lathe.i use brass and styrene reeds which though a little nasal require almost no adjustment and are of nice volume and stability.i am not sure why but i am a little shy about this"confession",perhaps partly because i didn’t know one could do this,i could do this.i’ve been playing one and one half years now and it’s coming along,but i fear i may always be a beginner,also i play celtic style nylon strung guitar and hi and low whistles.happy piping to all,laurence
Hi Tansy,
No, I haven’t made my own drones … yet.
Where’d you get your design or plans?
Cheers,
Henri VIII
[ This Message was edited by: Henri8 on 2001-08-02 13:38 ]
Were the plans your own design? If so would you mind sharing them? If you found them somewhere could you point us in the right direction to find them?
I want to learn but the cost of even a practice set is out of my price range right now, so being able to build a set would be great
sorry i took so long to reply but i had a sailboat and tropical storm barry to dance with.what i did was to borrow a set of pipes(robbie hughs)and measured every internal aspect of them and then reconstructed something close and fiddled and tweeked until it was sweet and stable.david dayes website has demensions that work well,so it would be easier to go there,also you can’t go wrong with his penny chanter for playing in tune and price.best of luck,tansy
I made my own tenor drone from Garvin’s plans. I also made my reed from brass, wood, and Styrine. Very easy to do and sounds great. There are very good pictures of how the reed is made on Kevin Scott’s Bagpipe page. I have heard not so good things about his chanters, but he is a wealth of information. Be weary of Garvin’s book. It shows the general concept but many of his “so called” scale drawings are not really scaleable. His inside bore dimensions are good but that is about it.