Wooden Practice Chanter

by finbar galdeep

8.7K136

Intro: Wooden Practice Chanter

These are two wooden practice chanters as used to practice palying to bag pipes, with out all the noise and effort of playing a full set. They are turned on a lathe out of cocobolo, an colorful tone wood from Central America, and use synthetic reeds. the ferules are, tagua nut, on the larger one, and tin on the smaller. the tin is nice because it is easy to melt and cast while being soft enough to turn with HSS. the mouth piece on the larger one is maple. the box is cocobolo, with brass fittings(they might be brass plated, I'm not sure). the pictures at the end are what i used to designed the smaller one. (the blue one is so i could see the holes better) the larger one was design using measurements from a real chanter, and is much more accurate. they have a 1/4 inch strait bore and the finger holes vary in size. the next ones i make will be out of partridge wood, another more traditional pipes tone wood.

6 Comments

crossfire 12 years ago

I'd love to see the 'ible on how to make this! They look fantastic!

Sol501 12 years ago

It looks beautiful! I'd love to see a full instructable. Always wanted to play the bagpipe but couldn't aford one nor a practice chanter :(

finbar galdeep 13 years ago

i meant to do full instructions, but forgot to take the pictures. when i do one in partridge wood ill make a full instructable.

RedneckEngineer 13 years ago

Very nice looking chanter. The tin ferule really looks better than I thought it would. I think brass would look even better. You really need to do a ible on makeing a chanter, then I could have a better idea what I need to make one! I would probably practice more if I made my own. As it is the one I got is poly and is shorter with no ferules or embelishments at all.

Kaelessin 13 years ago

These are absolutely beautiful! I'd love to see build instructions . . .I'm working on a Low D whistle at the moment and loving every minute of it!