Bag Cover

This weekend I sewed a bag cover out of an old pair of jeans. Turns out my pant leg is just wide enough to cover the bag, but I had to cut through the butt pocket. Now there’s a butt pocket on the bag, lol. I think it makes it look interesting. And it’s a folk instrument, we aren’t playing at Carnegie Hall here.

At some point I’ll take a photo and post it here. Maybe.

Blowpipe

I also made a bunch of blowpipe designs that didn’t work. One that I was really excited about was a membrane check valve using a butyl bicycle innertube for the membrane. It works great and would be low-maintenance, but unfortunately it doesn’t let enough volume of air into the bag, so I had to go back to the low-tech design David Daye used (this is becoming a trend).

Here’s my fancypants valve:

Here’s the one I wound up using:

I cut a little bit of innertube and tied it onto the flat spot of the tube, then bent it down over the opening. Because the innertube isn’t completely flat, I filled in a bit of a gap with some vaseline. It’s still not a perfect seal, but it seems to be good enough. I may revisit this later when I get a thicker innertube.

Bonus: Flute Tenons

The innertube also works really well as poor man’s cork for the flute joints: superior to the wound thread I was using before. Both of the flutes I have sitting around are playing ch better now on the lower notes (F, E, D), probably because my thread windings were leaking a little air, and the flute is extremely sensitive to leaks.

So that’s cool, I’ve got two pretty good flutes now.

What Remains

I’m just a few parts away from replacing the entire bagpipe:

• Air hose
• Connector from air hose to bellows
• Bellows
• Elbow pad
• Bellows check valve