A few weeks ago, my Uilleann pipes arrived.
I ordered them a bit over a year ago, in fall or winter 2023, from David Daye. He makes pipes from readily-available materials in the United States: mostly plumbing equipment. I think the only wood on this thing is the bellows.
The set was sent as a kit. He suggested putting the kit together, since the assembly represents a lot of maintenance tasks. I’m a fan of this approach: it’s how the 3D printer came, and indeed it helped me understand how everything went together, and has made it easier to understand what might need adjusting. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any kit assembly instructions, so I’ve had to work everything out from the instructions that were sent. That’s okay! I like a challenge!
In the last two weeks, I’ve put the bellows together, put the chanter together, inserted the feed tubes into the bag (one cut was involved), tied everything up, and spent about 10 days chasing down leaks. Today I gave up trying to find the leaks, and dunked the whole bag under water, to find it’s leaking all over the place. That’s okay! It means I need to season the bag with something called “Hardie’s Airtight Hide Bag Seasoning”, which is some sort of sticky goo that fills in holes. So that will be next.
In the meantime, I’ve been learning how to maintain the right amount of bag pressure, and how to fill it back up, by just playing a held A for minutes at a time. When I get bored with that, I’ll play a G, or sometimes a scale. The C♯ is a bit flat, and the low D is a bit sharp, and the E keeps jumping octaves. But I’m already much better than I was when I first started!