Working with vintage bagpipes is as much a hobby as a business for me. I enjoy the process of turning up old pipes and making sure they will be played for years to come. I think it is a good thing for piping. As such, I take great care in purchasing, examining and restoring old pipes.
My refurbisher is J. Dunbar Bagpipe Maker in St. Catharines, Ontario. Not only do they do masterful restorations, they have eagle eyes for examining 150-year-old wood and discovering replacement pieces and flaws that should be addressed before you play the pipes. If a set of pipes has a replacement or repaired piece, you will know about it before you buy.
You should know from the get-go that pretty much every bagpipe made before 1930 has required or will require repairs of some sort, especially if they are ebony. Ebony and cocuswood are superb woods from which to make bagpipes but they are less resilient than African blackwood. I suspect there is hardly an ebony bagpipe in the world made before 1920 that hasn’t experienced at least one crack.
Photos and descriptions of all instruments featured since October 2010
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Henderson, Circa 1930, Cocuswood/Brazillian Kingwood, Nickel, Ivory
SOLD – This is a slightly unusual Henderson set. It appears to be a mixture of cocuswood and Brazillian kingwood. This was not an uncommon Henderson configuration in the 1920s and 1930s. The ferrules are nickel, and the mounts and caps are ivory.
This is a tonally superb set, with a sweetness to the Henderson sound that is different from the more robust blackwood.
There are a couple of very slight dings in the projecting mounts, one on the blowstick, and a smaller one on the bass bottom.
The set has no original chanter (the chanter in the photographs was included by mistake). All stocks are replicas with matching ferrules, as there were no stocks with this set. The blowstick stock is a poly split stock, the rest are blackwood.
The pipes were refinished some years ago and the finish is still in excellent shape. The unusual wood configuration and replacement stocks result in a superb price for the classic Henderson sound.
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Henderson, Circa 1900, Ebony, German Silver and Ivory
SOLD – This old Henderson set could pass for silver and ivory, but is in fact German silver, a high quality precursor to what we now call nickel.
The wood is ebony. The pipes are beautifully made and the ivory is in excellent shape for its age, showing only a few spider lines here and there.
The set underwent a major refurbishment with hairline cracks, particularly under ferrules, in several pieces. All were invisible whipped.
Very few are visible except in one or two places where the browner shade of ebony couldn’t be perfectly matched on the bead. Invisible whipping is foolproof. Those cracks will not reopen.
Two of the five stocks are not originals. The drone stocks are all original, the chanter and blowstick stocks are replicas with the original mounts affixed. The ivory projecting mount on the blowstick was replaced with a matching Henderson mount. You would not know it isn’t original. The set was refinished.
The pipes display a fabulous, ebony Henderson tone, full but refined in a way only ebony can offer. The drones are steady, vibrant, full of blend, and tune in the right places.
This pipe could be played at any level.