First things first: I KNOW there was a similiar thread started recently, but I just wanted a few question asked…
I ws just wondering where pipemakers get/come up with their measurements for pipes, where they gt materials like lathes and woods, nd how do they get started? I know dave Hegarty and Joe McKenna both made their own sets without being fulltime makers.
Oh, and by the way, I fully intend to start reedmaking in the summer… 
Thanks in advance,
W.P
Yahoo groups amateurbagpipemakers is a great place to start. Take the time to read through the archives and you’ll have most all of your questions answered.
The recent thread is here
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?t=50330&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
Did list some sources but out of these I cannot find the David Quinn article on the Cummings drones but it is available on the Discussion forum for paid up members of the Seattle Pipers Club
Try here.
Try ebay for lathes, under, wood lathes, woodturning lathe, woodworking lathe, lathes, 
I got all my gear & tools from ebay, timber supplied by Martin Pidgeon of Grimsby, 
my reamers I had made to my spec. 
all the best, hope this helps.
I highly recommend “The Heart of the Instrument” set of DVDs from NPU for learning different methods of reedmaking.
The classes at Elkins, WV are good too (I took two of them under Eugene Lambe and Benedict Koehler).
E-mail dmquinn2u@verizon.net for information about his Pipes and Pipemaking DVD that he recently released.
If you only have one lathe, make it a metal lathe, not a wood lathe.
(See the numerous postings and topics related to this on the “other forum” www.uilleannforum.com)
Sparey’s “The Amateur’s Lathe” is a good little book for info on using it. Woodworking texts can be helpful with regard to turning the outside of parts, but many focus on bowl turning etc. whereas spindle turning techniques are mostly what interest us. Bear in mind also that techniques for turning exotic hardwoods are a bit different from those that work for softwoods and the moderate-hardness “hardwoods”.
Get your reedmaking up to speed first, read the DMQ and Sean Reid Society CD-ROMS, then you’ll have a sound basis.
best regards
Bill
Get the Sean Reid Society CD-ROMS from NPU. There are two extent, and rumour has it a third is in the works. Get David Quinn’s CD-ROM of his collected published articles - available form Mr. Quinn or through the Seattle Pipers’ Club. Get the William Garvin book from NPU for overall aesthetics. Get the Alan Ginsberg plans from just about everywhere in order to make Alan Ginsberg rich.
There are tons of resources. What are you waiting for? 
djm
Why? if you only have one lathe, make it a metal lathe Bill? pipes are made of wood not metal, you can do metal turning & metal finishing on a wood lathe with the right chuck and hand tools. 
Peter hunter, uses a Myford woodturning lathe, Dave Shaw turns on a Coronet woodturning lathe, Davy Stephenson uses woodturning lathes, I suppose if you can’t woodturn then you probably are better useing a Metal work lathe, 
but you’ll certainly notice the difference of craftmanship and finish of the wood of a set of pipes made on a woodturning lathe, than that of a set made on a metal work lathe. thats my opinion any way. 
Metal turning lathes have one very big advantage - tool making. They are also heavier and can take off centre boring / reaming operations better.
There is of course no difference in the finish of wood between a wood turning lathe or a metal turning lathe as this comes down to tools and correct sharpening and their application. I use a mixture of chisels and form tools both hand held and captive, as did the pipemakers of old.
It is just a question of choosing a lathe with a good speed range and availability of ancilliary equipment. Myford 7 / super 7, Boxford CUD/BUD/AUD/ME10 all have this including woodturning rests.
The ML8 Woodturning lathe has a metal turning attachent available but it is only recommended (by Myfords) for non-ferrous work.
Several lathes in the workshop all set up to do different jobs would be the ideal but it is a question of room and finance.
A metal turning lathe need not be expensive and as ‘Reedman’ suggests watch Ebay. Also try the S/H machinery dealers advertising in Model Engineering Magazines and also publications such as ‘Loot’. I know of one member of this forum who recently picked an ML7 for an incredibly low sum. Not only was it in good condition but came with a whole host of ornamental turning attachments.
Chris
Your right Chris, a metal work lathe will be needed if you intend to make your reamers and tools, I do all my work on a sturdy Record CL1 Coronet lathe with a variable speed unit 0-2500rpm, all bought for just under £200, plus 2 new chucks costing £250, a total of £450, plus chisels second hand ones £65 in total, a grand total now around £515, all the long drills I picked up on ebay all from the USA for around $90=£45
so we now have a grand total of £560, reamers some I made by hand, and other I had made costing £400 so together it cost me around £950 say £1000 total, not bad to set up, I also have a second boxford lathe which has never been used yet, cost me £250 standing in my work shop, I do all my centre boring work on the woodturning lathe, all the wood turning on the woodturning lathe, and metal finishing on the woodturning lathe with hand tools, reamers are held in the vice when the step drilled chanter blanks are reamed out, then turned, most older metal work lathes only have a top speed of 1450rpm, woodturning lathes have much higher speeds of 2000-2500rpm which give better finishing to the woods with tools & finishing oils & waxes, jobs can be done much more quickly on a woodturning lathe than a metal work lathe, because there is no change over of tooling needed, I just find it much more easier to do work on the woodturning lathe, thats the way I was taught, “but I will say this,” before anyone intends to use a lathe for wood or metal work, get some training by someone of experience, lathes are very dangerous machines, but hey! at the end of the day,every maker to there own.
Any makers professional, amateur or otherwise like to list out what they have in the way of lathes and machinery - what they class as essential and what just makes pipemaking easier - would seem a useful thing to do as I am sure there are quite a few budding makers on the forum who are wondering just how much they need to spend to set up a workshop.
I am guessing that with the advice by Reedman that it will be less than the cost of a set of pipes
John
These might be handy or some good for any pipe makers starting up,or wanting to tool up, these seem like a bargain, 
sizes are 5/32nd=3.96mm #21. keep a way from the cobalt ones,there rock hard, some of the other sizes are handy thow for step boring.I’m going to try some, all the best. 
http://stores.ebay.com/FURRYLETTERS_DRILL-BITS-12_W0QQcolZ4QQdirZ1QQfsubZ10495654QQftidZ2QQtZkm
Oh’ I forgot to mention you will need to have your drills ground up for wood,shipping for five drills to the UK is $9.00.all the best.
This is the sort of lathe I would go for, for beginning making pipes, it has a low speed for centre boring of 250rpm, up to 3000rpm for finishing work, lovely lathes these, you will need a chuck & steadying post for this one, you can pick them up easily,or have them made to fit the lathe for not to much exspence, this is a bargain. all the best.
OK, this is my opinion as someone relatively new to professional making but having been an observer for a good number of years…
IMO A minority of new pipemakers are getting top results. Key things that determine the degree of success include:
knowledge of and experience with the pipes
patience
reedmaking ability
tool quality
(possibly in that order.)
Key tasks include long-hole boring, reamer making, reaming, and metalworking. For all of these tasks a metal lathe is superior. In the case of reamer and tool making, I would advise against anyone attempting to do this on a wood lathe (though it is no doubt possible, with modifications and determination). Lathe speeds of 100RPM or below are really needed. But I want to say no more about the metal-versus-wood issue, leaving it to the reader to decide, except to acknowledge that wood lathes are in general cheaper, and point out that a number of makers including Geoff Wooff use only one lathe - a metal lathe.
Other key tasks include tonehole boring and voicing and reeding. For these tasks no expensive tools are required beyond a simple drill press. Another key task is measurement; for this you will have to make many of your own tools. There’s little point in madly reaming and boring if you can’t measure what you’ve produced, to check it against your intentions.
Long-hole boring can be accomplished inexpensively and with excellent results using shopmade D bits (and lots of patience). This means that gun drills, while extremely useful, are optional, if you have a good setup for turning your own metal tools. Same goes for reamers; again, patience can substitute for the expense of a milling machine (my first reamers were cut in two by hand with a hacksaw, then hand-filed - a truly horrible job, but possible. Buy lots of blades if you try this, and set aside a couple of days.) Some people seem to get decent results with flat reamers ground from tool steel, but IMO they require a sensitivity and knack that few possess.
I advise against “making do”. Too many compromises are likely to result in poor results. Many pipemaking tools must be made, not bought, anyhow, and even more can be made in the shop, if you have the basic complement of tools. Buying more tools is helpful but not strictly necessary. Tool steel and time may end up being your primary expenses!
I guess my must-have list would look something like this (price guesstimates for new equipment, except for the metal lathe which is used):
The lathe is most of the expense unless you get lucky and pick up a used Southbend/Boxford/etc. for a bargain. Used Myfords tend to command a better price. (A new chinese cheap lathe could serve, but my understanding is that considerable effort can be required to get such a lathe up to spec, motor needs replacing and things need shimming, etc. - a job for someone with previous experience)
Bottom line seems to be that the tooling cost could be kept under 1000 (euro or dollars, since tools are cheaper in the US) - with lots of toolmaking effort. Where hand tools are concerned, especially, I’d recommend buying the better grade and not trying to save 5/10 euro/dollars here and there by buying junk.
Lastly, you need loads of patience, determination, and an eye for detail. That’s the stuff you can’t buy…
Bill
The thing is to day is, you can buy and obtain quality materials & metals already prepared for the job, long boring drills, hardened ground flat bar steel, 3.5mm-4mm-5mm-in thickness, 15mm in width, in thirty inch lengths for £8-£9, makes lovely double edge flat tapered cutting reamers, batches of drills and bits can can be taking for sharpening and facing at local engineering shops for little exspence and machined up by a professional for £10-£20, some of my flat bar reamers I have made make as lovely a job as good as my four fluted tapered cutting reamers on chanters bores, which where professional made and pricey, I can’t really see any need for a metal work lathe, 
mind you,the bench grinder is a very handy tool, my opinion is, a pipemaker none professional or professional is only as good as the pipemaker or persons who trains him, do you hounestly think the pipemakers of old, if they had the materials we have today already made to use, would’nt be useing it, “do the traditional pipemakers of today use treadal lathes!,” why not? that the tradional way isn’t it?. from what I seen they seem to just apply the bits they like, in my opinion tradional pipemaking don’t mean good pipes. what makes great pipes! is the person holding the chisel & his or hers experience along with a mark of there craftsmanship. thats my opinion, but everyone to there own.all the best.
Ah, to choose a wood lathe or a metal lathe, if one had to make the choice. Personaly, I have both so I don’t have to make that choice, but If I did have to, I would squarly choose to keep my metal lathe (trusty old heavy-duty Logan 11"). In fact I am always on the look out for another quality old metal lathe to replace the wood lathe. I would increase the top-end speed on that sucker for finish work and such. My newer model wood lathe (Jet) took subtantial modification to make it even useable for the ornamental turning work of pipe building, let alone the precision work like long hole boring.
Apart form the ability to make conical reamers on the metal lathe, I find a need for turning metal on a regular basis, like when I need to make capsains for a pipe bender to make the bass drone bends - I simply did it! Or when I wanted to make a heavt-duty 5C collet chuck for my wood lathe I just made one (in this case it was far from a simple matter, but impossible without the metal lathe). So one should look beyond reamer making, the ability to cut metal is extremely useful one in this endeavor.
One thing that the prospective pipe builder shopping for a lathe should consider is that Metal lathes are built so much more substatially than even the best wood lathes, and to a much higher degree of quality and precision. You should also expect the sale of any quality new or used lathe to include substantial tooling that either does not come with your typical wood lathe, or is not even available. In which case you will need to make it youself (time is money). A steady rest is a good example of an item that is standard with a metal lathe, but not even available for wood lathes in general. Three and four jaw chucks are another example. A good metal lathe is likely to cost you more up front than a suitable wood lathe, but after you figure in the extra work and parts you will need the two may not be so different in price anymore.
It is possible to get a wood lathe (or something that looks like one, but does not really work well, there is a lot a crap out there) for apparently little mullah. But even in the best of circumstances I think that you will find that you will need to make a substantial number of improvements to said lathe to get it aligned for drilling. In the worst case it might prove to be useless. I have seen several cheapo wood lathes that look superficially similar to the Jet (these are all copies of the older Delta/Rockwell wood lathe that was much more substantially built) but on closer examination were complete crap; tremendous play in the bearings, bed and ways were so piss-poor that they were visibley not flat. No amount of work would make this into something that you could make qaulity pipes with, regardless of skill.
Please don’t take offense Reedman, I can see where you are coming from. You can make a good wood lathe work for pipe building, and I’m sure you are not the only one who does. I just don’t think that one should over look a metal lathe as only something that is useful if you are going to make reamers on it. My background is a technical one (scientific, engineering) so I am comfortable with operating a metal lathe, I realize others may not find them as friendly as I do. Metal lathes are far from simple if you have never operated one, and evaluating the quality of a used one is difficult if you don’t know what to look for.
[quote=“elmek”]Any makers professional, amateur or otherwise like to list out what they have in the way of lathes and machinery - what they class as essential and what just makes pipemaking easier - would seem a useful thing to do as I am sure there are quite a few budding makers on the forum who are wondering just how much they need to spend to set up a workshop.[quote]
Since this topic has been raised here, I thought that I might add that I am preparing an article for the “Piper’s Review” on just this issue. I was trying to get it in for the Summer edition, but I’m afraid I will have to tell Wally that we need to shoot for the fall edition instead. I hope that this article will answer some folks questions about evaluating, setting up and operating a lathe suitable for pipe making. I was just going to focus on the metal lathe, since this is what I have the most experience with in terms of pipemaking, but if any of you wood lathe users have any thing to contribute in terms of what you had to do to make a wood lathe work for you I would gladly consider adding that info to the article if you like. Please let me know, obviously I think there are more than a small handful of people interested in this topic!
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[quote=“reedman”]do you hounestly think the pipemakers of old, if they had the materials we have today already made to use, would’nt be useing it, “do the traditional pipemakers of today use treadal lathes!,” why not? [quote]
Ah, what excatly did the old master pipe makers use ito make such exquisite pipes back in the day? Now that is an interesting question I have been pondering recently. The treadle lathe certainly was common in those days, but did they have access to something more high-tech? I have come accross references to instrument builders in the UK during that era using Holtzappel and Rose ornamental turnining lathes to produce instruments, but no reference to union pipe makers as such. Could they have afforded such elaborate and technically cutting-edge machines for union pipe making? If anyone has anything to add on this subject I would be most grateful.
~John
I have Boxford CUD and Union Graduate lathes. Julian Goodacre recommended the Graduate. It makes all the difference having both a metal lathe and a wood lathe! When I was a kid I had a Wadkin Bursgreen pattern maker’s lathe which was a wood lathe with a saddle and cross slide on a 48" bed. Its owner reclaimed it and sent it to Croatia for the war effort. I think it would have been the perfect woodwind making machine. Then I have a big drill press. Oh,and I have to blag the use of a milling machine sometimes! Thats all the machine tools I need. I suggest that a beginner should get the sturdiest wood lathe they can afford, and track down a quality metal lathe that they can get the use of.
Cheers for the info John, pipemaking is a craft, you just don’t need heavey steardy metal lathes to make pipes, I will admitt a metal work lathe is handy for cutting regulators key ways with a milling attachment, but any engineering shop will make you a steady post for any wood lathe from £40-£60, I centre bore my chanter blanks out on my coronet woodturning lathe and the run out is no more than 0.50mm, but were turning wood here, the reamers will correct any slight bore error, were not making parts for NASA, all most pipers would really like to do is make them selves a chanter or a half set of pipes, some wood turning classes would be helpful to a beginner, anyone wanting to go pro, would then will need to some training with a pipemaker. but a work shop could be fitted out for a few hundred pounds if you shop around for real bargains, when I first started making pipes I use a record DLM24 woodturning lathe cost me second hand £50 a bargain it was, I made some great chanters on that lathe.and that was also the same make of lathe I was taught on at the wood craft college were I trained in woodturning for two years, I dont use the tail stock for boring chanter blanks when there set up in the steady post, and yes you can make pipes on a lathe like this with some training, I know, because the chanter I play on was made on a lathe like this, all the best.
Here is a record DML24, I’m not to keen on the chuck tho.