My New Old Pipes

[OC Richard]

Just two weeks ago I acquired this old set.









They had sat unplayed for many years.

They're early Lawries. If you go to Ringo Bowen's Bagpipe Museum and click on the Lawrie page you'll see that these are very similar to the top Lawrie shown, and also to the set a few sets down the page, the one sitting on a lace doily. This makes me think that these are pre-1905. Also indicative of an early date is that they're made of ebony.

I've seen old Lawries like this before: the appearance of a silver and ivory set, but the metalwork is the typical Lawrie spun nickel, hand engraved with the typical Lawrie nickel pattern.

The day I got these I stayed up most of the night cleaning old grime off the ivory, cleaning and oiling the wood, and most labourious of all cleaning the metalwork, which was a dull copper colour. It took much polish and elbow grease to get down to the bare metal.

I tied these into a bag and stuck some EzeeDrones in there and wow they play great, that big fat vintage tone, easy to strike in, easy to tune, and very stable. They've been out to four gigs now and they're my go-to pipes.

That's a new McCallum chanter. The original Lawrie chanter wasn't with the set.