This just completed:
Time to make: about three hours, and is my fifth try.
What went well:
1. I found some very nice upholstery leather at “The Leather Factory” that was on sale at half price (still costing $3.49 a square foot). It feels about right for a bag and does not seem to pass air.
2. Tried a smaller domed rivet on Alex’s suggestion and that worked out.
3. Previously I had been using a leather awl to punch holes, which is time consuming and hard on the hands, and a bit dangerous I think as your hands get tired. This time I used a 1/8″ drill on the drill press to drill a hole in the four layers of leather. It worked very well, and the rivets slipped right through the holes– no fishing and pushing which is also hard on the hands.
4. The nap picks up every peices of dirt and ends up full of gunk, even if you are working in a clean environment. I found a good way to clean the nap is to blow 90PSI compressed air. All the gunk just blows away.
5. This took a LOT less time than a hand-stitched bag.
What went wrong:
1. Gluing the leather strip in place around the edge is still difficult and fidgety work. This is especially true when the nap side of the leather is out; you really don’t want to get any contact cement on the nap, as it is very difficult to get out. Getting the strip even on both sides is difficult too, and the glue needs to be somewhat wet so you can make adjustments as you go along crimping the strip to the bag. Need to use masking tape to mask the nap, though I don’t want to cause any pullout of the nap that way. This operation is much easier for a bag with the finished leather side out (which I seem to like better — I don’t find it too slipery).
2. How to you get contact (rubber) cement out of the nap without damaging the nap?
Questions:
1. The leather is chrome-tanned and seems air-tight. Can I get away without seasoning this? I mean to try. Seasoning on the outside might be a good idea, but it does crush the nap. I could stand that, but not sure about other pipers.
2. The “right” leather is hard to find. Locally in Albuquerque, I can never find the same leather twice.
3. What is the best way to cut the mainstock tie-in slices later (maybe much later). My thought is that some small hard cutting surface should be inserted inside the bag during this operation, lest the back side of the bag be inadvertently sliced while cutting the pie slices.
4. Should the area around the blowpipe and mainstock tie-ins be reinforced with a second piece of leather glued inside the bag? This seems a point of failure on some bags I am seeing.
5. The price of materials in the US is going up a lot. The willingness to pay more (to cover increased costs) seems flat.
6. What is this bag worth on the market? Three hours plus materials (very expensive leather, contact cement, rivets, amortized tools like the cutter, cutting mat, etc.)
7. A stitched bag would be even nicer, but I see no way to justify the cost of a machine like the Artisan Toro-3000 (~$2200.00 US, 2008). You would have to make and sell a lot of bags to pay for this.
8. Is this even worth doing, given the price and quality of the L&M bags that so many professional makers are using.? Answer: no, except for maybe the aesthetics, thought the L&M bag is very attractive and well made.
I bought an L&M bag last year for $129 US. Yikes! My materials cost is half that. They must essentially be paying minimum wage for piece work to their makers.
Posted by hpinson as Uilleann Deconstruction Blog at 11:41 AM EDT
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I’ve been experimenting with making stapled bellows.
Here is a photo essay of the process (part 1).
And here are the end results:
Posted by hpinson as Uilleann Deconstruction Blog at 1:52 PM EDT
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After much tweaking, especially of an unstable baritone reed, I’m relativly happy with the stability of the drone reeds of my concert D half-set, in that the three reeds: bass, baritone, and tenor, are finally for the most part stable, and are tone-locking.
Here is a sample.
The drone sample was recorded with a cheap Logitech desktop microphone, unprocessed, and saved to MP3. But it is still indicative of how good these drones sound.
I say happy for the most part– there is still a tiny bit of reed instability that you can hear (listen for the phase shifting), and I still can’t get all three drones to cut in reliably by flipping the drone on-off valve. I have to vary pressure to get them all started. I’m not quite sure what to do about the latter.
It’s taken quite a bit of effort and tweaking to get the drones to this point. I wonder how many isolated pipers just give up, not having access to a maker or expert who can setup their drone reeds. They may not even know the aural difference between good working reeds and ones that are ailing. Hearing a good set of drones tuned by someone who really knows how to approach this task really helped me. Last Fall, I was able to observe Benedict Koehler tuning drones on one of his earlier instruments at the 2007 SoCal Tionol. This really helped with my approach.
My drone reeds had two problems when I received them: they took a lot of air to move, and they were instable, in that the pitch of all three would rise and fall with pressure. The baritone reed was the worse offender. Shaving the drone reeds carefully to about 1.5mm, and working with placement of the bridals (up and down the reed) solved both problems. Now they are stable, and play with much less pumping of the bellows. For what it is worth, I have best luck using rubber “O” rings for bridals, two per reed, with diameter a little smaller than the reed (1/4″ OD for the baritone reed in this case).
When I started with the reeds, I really did not understand how they worked. I found that completing Edward Damm’s tutorial for building composite reeds was worthwhile for helping to understand the physics of drone reeds; reed length, tongue weight, tongue length, and bridal placement. Though I completed three composite reeds based on this method, I am not using any of them in practice, as they seemed too quiet for my particular drone configuration, which is robust. They did play very easily, with an even lighter pressure than my current tweaked cane reeds. In all the excercise cost around $10, and was very worthwhile.
Tim Britton also offers a more involved composite reed tutorial here.
Posted by hpinson as Uilleann Deconstruction Blog at 8:48 PM EST
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Here are the Oneway Drillwizard wizard and Oneway Steady Rest in action. The project was a simple conical bore flute. The Drillwizard was used to drill the embouchure, tone holes, and tenon, using Forstner bits of various sizes.
The Drillwizard does not fit every hand drill. This one is a Rigid 1/2 inch variable speed (R7111), which fits well. Another problem I had with the Drillwizard was that the toolpost was tool long for the Delta X5 lathe banjo. A quick trip to the metal lathe and cutoff tool, reduced length by 1″, which is enough.
I really like both the Drillwizard and the Steady Rest. Oneway seems to make excellent tools.
Posted by hpinson as Uilleann Deconstruction Blog at 12:41 PM EST
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I’ve been working too hard thinking about cutting tapers. A simple taper on a wood cylinder is much easier to do on a wood lathe, than a metal lathe.
On a metal lathe, a cutting a taper in wood requires tailstock offset, and some calculation on how much to offset to achieve that taper you are after. Doable once you get the hang of it, but complicated.
After a few hours on my new Delta X5 wood lathe, I’m convinced making a taper is much easier done by hand and eye using either a sharp skew or a roughing gouge.
If only a metal lathe is available, perhaps the thing to do would be to fit a toolrest.
However, tapers on metal rod, a reamer for instance, are best performed on a metal lathe with offset tailstock.
Posted by hpinson as Uilleann Deconstruction Blog at 8:22 PM EST
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After ruining a reed gouge and an old roughing out gouge by trying to hand sharpen on a grinder, I decided to investigate tool sharpening systems that give some control and precision to the sharpening process. I looked at some of the more expensive systems like those available from Tormek, but ended up settling on a much less expensive ($135 US) and seemingly very versitile solution - the Woodcut Tools Tru-Grind Tool Sharpening System. It is simple and effective for most kind of sharpening: gouges, skews, cutoff tools.
The kit came with a short but very helpful video on setup and use.
Here’s some user opinion about this tool. And here are more pros and cons.
I’m pretty darn happy with it, especially since it holds a 1 1/4″ roughing gouge. I have not yet figured out how to reverse bevel a reed gouge. Any ideas would be appreciated.
Posted by hpinson as Uilleann Deconstruction Blog at 7:33 PM EST
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The Oneway Drill Wizard looks incredibly useful for drilling precise indexed holes, directly on a flatbed lathe.
Here is a detailed review.
Posted by hpinson as Uilleann Deconstruction Blog at 12:55 PM EST
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From the 2007 Southern California Uilleann Pipers Club Tionól.
Patrick D’Arcy teaches a GFGA Cran to beginners, slowly. From his Sixpenny Money tutorial in the beginners class on Sunday.
More information about Crans is available at Patrick’s website.
Posted by hpinson as Uilleann Deconstruction Blog at 6:35 PM EST
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From the 2007 Southern California Uilleann Pipers Club Tionól.
Patrick D’Arcy patiently taught a group of beginners the jig, Sixpenny Money. Patrick concentrated on teaching ornamentation, including crans, cuts, strikes, and the closed style of playing. Here he slows things down, so that we can learn the details.
It is much harder to do this ornamentation slowly.
I’m finding that this is what works for me:
1. Get the basic tune in my head. To do this, I learn the tune on an instrument that I know well.
2. Get the sound of the ornamentation and closed style into my head, again on an instrument where I don’t have to think twice about executing this sort of technique, in my case, the English Concertina.
3. One I can sing the song and ornamentation in my head, start working the patterns on the D chanter. Slow repitition is the key; stopping as soon as I feel my grip tightening on the chanter, relaxing, then starting again.
4. An voila… it starts to happen. A week of practice started with a death grip on the chanter, and honks and squeaks like a rank beginner again. About Wednesday the death-grip started to loosen, as some to the patterns and popping get under my fingers. Each day brings progress.
Posted by hpinson as Uilleann Deconstruction Blog at 6:08 PM EST
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Hand-stitched bellows project, completed, 10/28/07. It is based on the four-part tutorial by David M. Quinn in the Pipers Review. This is my first attempt.
Lots went wrong in the making, but much went well. To my amazement, the beast is airtight, sucking, pushing, and holding air better than any bellows that I’ve had, at my limited disposal.
Problems included:
- I had difficulty routing the stitching slot. I used an 8mm end mill running in a Sherline milling machine at about 2500 RPM, which tore the soft poplar wood. This is the top speed for this mill. Next time I will use a high speed router running at least at 20K RPM and a template. I also drilled stitch holes first, and then routed, which resulted in some wandering of the slot. I was able to clean up the mess with a Dremal tool, and the results are acceptable, though not perfect as I would have liked.
- The gusset is double-walled — upholstory leather glued to thin pig skin leather, fuzzy side to fuzzy side. This is quite an airtight arrangement, but I made a poor choice in glue, using Leather Weld, from The Leather Factory, which turns out to be a fancy re-packaging of Elmers glue at increased cost. Needless to say, the leather bond was poor. If I were to redo, I would use contact cement like Barge or Tandy Craftsman Contact Cement.
- Beeswax to staunch the stitch groove. On the plus side the hot beeswax sealed any air leaks associated with the stitching holes. The downside is that is was quite messy, and wax went everywhere. Cleanup was easy with heat directed from a hair dryer. I have since gotten a recipe from Andrew Flint for a black beeswax that is more putty-like. I can’t wait to try that.
- I used Danish Oil for a finish. I do not find this satisfactory, and next time will attempt to French Polish. If one is to spend all this time making a hand-stitched bellows, then the finish should really stand out.
- An air intake valve that looks like a tinker-toy. I have since redone this, disposing of the tinkertoy-like valve, and replacing it with one that is much more asthetically pleasing. The new valve is not visible in these images.
Success:
- Stitching the gusset to the clappers went much better than expected. I started by gluing with Barge cement, letting set for 15 minutes or so before pressing together, and then saddle stitching a half-clapper section at a time, i.e two lengths of waxed thread per clapper, starting at the hinge end, and ending at the top center. The resulting seam is air-tight. I fixed the thread knots with just a dab of superglue, so that they would not unravel with usage.
- I did route a shallow V groove in the clapper bottom. Maybe this was not necessary. DMQ in his article does this, but says that it may not be needed.
- I made a nice looking maple air-intake valve, stained black, to imitate ebony. Each time I turn one of these, it looks nicer than the one before.
- Use of a “Little Mac” high-tech blowstock flapper valve to replace the traditional leather flapper. This works so well, that I can’t imagine doing it any other way now. If you have not experiemented with the “Little Mac” either on the bag inlet or the bellows intake, at $12.50 per, it is well worth the effort, with some very impressive performance. Order a few and experiment.
- The hand made brass exhaust duct came out quite well. My silver-soldering skills are improving. Buffing with yellow compound really made this look good.
It took about 40 hours to make, over about a month, including trips to the hardware store, and various other local suppliers.
I’m hoping to photograph the steps in construction of the next bellows that I make, now that some of the problems that I had are worked out. My hope is to post that here.
Posted by hpinson as Uilleann Deconstruction Blog at 8:29 PM EDT
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Martin Preshaw has posted an excellent photo-essay of the process of hand-rolling metal ferrules out of sheet brass or nickle silver stock.
http://www.unionpipes.co.uk/sept/thumb.html
This complements Davey Stephensons tutorial:
http://www.bagpipeworks.co.uk/intrest.htm
Tapers can be acheived by making the rectangle trapezoidal.
Posted by hpinson as Uilleann Deconstruction Blog at 9:45 PM EDT
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The Groz ‘Metal Bender” is an inexpesive rig for bending hobby tubing or hand rolled brass or nickle silver ferules. It is available from MSC Direct for about $82.00 US. It seems to work well with some modification. I think that it the same one that Davey Stephenson references on his website.
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Posted by hpinson as Uilleann Deconstruction Blog at 3:45 PM EDT
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An interview with Cillian Ó Briain on the The Liraman experience Blog.
“My conclusion now is that you can have a specific bore and a set of note holes and make ten chanters….and there will be one that will be noticeable better than the rest and there will be one that just won’t work. Even with 100 percent dimension consistency you will get different results when dealing with timber. Really, anything you make out of timber always does have this little element of luck.” — Cillian Ó Briain
Posted by hpinson as Uilleann Deconstruction Blog at 8:45 PM EDT
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An understandable explanation of just intonation and chanter / drone tuning technique:
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?t=22100&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15
Posted by hpinson as Uilleann Deconstruction Blog at 12:28 PM EDT
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Here’s a recipe for cutting a taper by offsetting a lathe tailstock:
Source: http://www.eod.gvsu.edu/eod/manufact/manufact-51.html
Posted by hpinson as Uilleann Deconstruction Blog at 12:16 PM EDT
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Last night I got to spend some time with the VFD converted lathe. What I found was pretty much as expected after some comments on the Yahoo Lathemaster Group list. Basically, because I selected a higher RPM motor, I have much less torque at lower speeds.
My application is boring hardwoods (very long bores in ebony and blackwood, and tapered reaming at low RPM) and some light metal cutting (making reamers and D bits).
Real world results are that the lathe is quite useable, but not optimal with the 3750 RPM motor. For me, I think the 1750rpm 1HP motor would work fine and provide all the torque that I need. I will be looking to find that sort of a motor.
I bored through a 15″ maple round using an 18mm twist drill. This is a very long bore. The lathe no longer has enough torque at very low RPM’s to do this, and just bogs down even with the VFD torque compensation maxed. Once I got up to above 600 RPM, the drilling went fine so long as I went slow, and did not push too hard. Note that ebony is a much harder wood than maple, so I can expect trouble.
Then I bored through a similar maple round using a gun drill. As expected– no problem and I could do this even at low RPM. The air-cooled gundrill cuts cool and efficient, being of a small 6mm diameter. The gundrill really wants high RPM and fast feed anyway.
The I did some simple light cuts on 01 steel at ~1800 rpm, and that worked fine too.
In terms of torque, this is not an improvement over the factory Chinese 3/4 horsepower motor and original pulley arrangement, and use of the high RPM requires consideration of the stock bearings.
However, I must say that I am enjoying the variable speed aspect, and can get some very nice smooth cuts in wood and metal at around what I estimate to be 2000 RPM.
The Powertwist V-Belt has made external mount of a larger motor easy.
Other notes are that the VFD is mounted on a post and rides well above the lathe. It us convenient, but away from the chips. Yes, this is a wood cutting application so can be very dusty. I mounted some cheesecloth on the VFD fan intake, which should keep most dust out.
Posted by hpinson as Uilleann Deconstruction Blog at 10:20 AM EDT
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The Lathemaster 9×30 lathe’s Chinese AC motor capacitor blew. Three weeks later, the lathe is converted to three-phase AC VFD controlled variable speed with rpm from 1 to about 3000. No more belt changes or capacitors!
It took a while to get the parts:
- Teco Fluxmaster 50 115v 1 Phase in > 230v 3 phase out VFD ($120) (from factorymation.com)
- Marathon 0-3600 RPM 3 Phase, 1 HP, Inverter/Continuous Duty, TEFC Motor ($190 new) (from factorymation.com) (see note about torque and rpm below)
- Balanced 2.5″ 5/8 shaft keyed iron pully.
- Powertwist Plus V belt ($25)
- 12 Gauge electrical cord from 115v wall outlet to VFD.
- 12 Gauge electrical cord from VFD to motor.
The lathe now runs headless, with all wiring and sheet metal enclosures removed, leaving just the spindle head exposed. The motor is mounted flat, bolted to the table next to the lathe. The old motor and speed change pulleys are removed entirely from the lathe. The Powertwist v-belt between motor and spindle is flexible and quiet, and can be adjusted easily.
Pluses:
- From the VFD face I can control speed, direction, and torque compensation. One thing the 1HP 3-phase AC motor lacks at low RPMs is torque. I can boost low-end torque through a VFD function.
- Really nice finishes are possible with the higher available rpm.
- The 115v single phase to 230v three-phase VFD is an amazing and affordable piece of technology. I thought I was going to have a major shop rewiring job on my hands and this provides a solution. It is drawing about 4 amps.
- An external on-off switch, and a speed potentiometer can be added quite easily. I don’t think I really need the pot. The on off switch I will add.
- The AC motor is more robust than the DC, because it has less parts (this may be offset by the durability of the VFD– time will tell).
- The Powertwist v-belt is nice. Quiet, flexible, and adjustable.
- The manual was “good enough”. I could figure out most of the VFD functions. It provided enough information for a novice to do the wiring.
Minuses
- Low-end torque is barely adequate at 75 rpm, and inadequate if rpm is any less. To some extent this can be compensated for with a Fluxmaster VFD function. I have VFD torque compensation set to the maximum (10) and this should be ok for low speed drilling and reaming. “Should be”… I’ve not actually tried this yet. Torque over about 150rpm seems fine.
Questions:
- If I had chosen the 1HP 1725rpm motor rather than the 3600 rpm motor, would low-end torque improve?
- How will the Lathemaster spindle bearings hold up to the higher RPM? These seem sealed, and do seem to heat. Are higher quality spindle bearings available? Would it be possible to create an oil-immersion environment in the spindle head for cooling? — Update 7/10/07 — Bob at Lathemaster says: “The bearings are not designed for higher RPM and are simply grease packed taper roller bearings. They are a standard size and can be replaced with Timkin or other high RPM bearings.”
- How can I now measure spindle RPM?
- How will the VFD hold up in a dusty environment? It is basically a little computer with a fan.
Notes:
- For safety, use an “inverter duty” AC motor for this application, which has heavier internal wiring. The VFD control makes the motor run hot. A lot of what you see on ebay is not inverter duty. TEFC means totally enclose fan cooled. You want that.
- The motor was not a direct bolt-on replacement for the stock motor. It is larger, thus the tabletop mounting.
- Factorymation.com was an excellent company to deal with. The sales staff were very knowledgeable, and took time to match VFD and motor to the application.
Posted by hpinson as Uilleann Deconstruction Blog at 1:44 PM EDT
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A lathe is the core tool of pipemaking.
Two general types of lathe are available: the metal lathe and the wood lathe. Optimally, one would have both, but these are expensive beasts, and take up a lot of space. My shop is my garage, and I don’t have a great deal of room, so for now, I needed to choose one or the other. There are arguments to be made that a wood-lathe should be acquired first, as such a lathe allows for hand turning, a core pipemaking skill, but a metal lathe can more easily be adapted for wood turning than can a wood lathe be adapted for the kind of carriage-based precision work that a metal lathe is capable of. So I chose metal lathe and will add a toolrest.
Some of the best metal lathes available are the MyFords, Hardinges and some older American metal lathes, but for me these are just to pricy. And, there just aren’t any used Myford Super 7’s in my neck of the woods. Even the excellent Taiwanise Hardinge clones are over $10,000 US. My budget was in the $1k-$2k range (you laugh!)
What are available and affordable are the Chinese-made metal lathes. The quality of these varies a great deal, and most need a good deal of work before they are usable. Some are intolerably bad, and some are not bad at all, with some labor and modification. I like to think of Chinese metal lathes as kits. While the initial cost of such Chinese lathes is initially low, you end up spending a good deal to retrofit them to a workable state. You may spend as much as the cost of the lathe. Don’t expect a 100% working Chinese lathe out of the box! For example, it’s very common to have the lathe delivered with a foobar motor, or wire dangling loose. That can be very frustrating, but you learn a lot about your lathe and how it operates and how it is repaired, and gaining self-sufficiency with your tools is a worthy goal, i.e. fix it yourself as opposed to calling an (expensive) repairman.
In choosing a Chinese metal lathe I set the following requirements:
- 30″ or greater between centers. 40″ would be optimal. You need this great length to accommodate the piece you are turning plus the length of any drilling implement.
- Pre alignment. The vendor should make some effort to ensure everything is straight. Ways should be checked and spot on with no twist. There is nothing worse that getting a 500 pound lathe that is so badly out of alignment that you have to return it (at your expense, and shipping these things is both costly and unwieldy).
- 1″ or greater spindle bore. It is very convenient to be able to push work back through the spindle. This can make a shorter bed lathe accommodate longer lengths. The bigger spindle bore the better.
- 75-2500 RPM, variable speed, forward and reverse. Slow RPM’s are used for boring and reaming, and high RPM’s are used for finishing. Variable speed is far preferable to the tedious and dangerous job of changing belts for every desired speed change. I think I would be scared of a chunk of wood turning much faster that 2500 RPM.
- Weight; the heavier the better, to discourage vibration. A good lathe weight in the 300 to 1000 pound range.
- Offsetable tail stock, so that you can turn tapers.
- A tail stock camlock is handy.
- Powerfeed in the x axis, which allows for very smooth long cuts.
- MT Live Center and MT2 Bullnose Live Center. But quality. The Chinese $29 specials are no darn good. I use a nice Groz that cost about $75.
- Self aligning three-jaw chuck.
- Independent 4-jaw chuck.
- A set of lathe dogs and faceplate.
- T Slots on the carriage bed.
Based on these criteria, I started looking my search for a metal lathe.
Obviously, a cheap Chinese metal-lathe is unlikely to meet all these requirements. Thus, the lathe should be capable of being retrofitted to some extent.
After a great deal of research, I choose the Lathemaster 9×30 ($1289 in 2007).
To be continued…
Posted by hpinson as Uilleann Deconstruction Blog at 9:50 AM EDT
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Hi. Welcome to my Uilleann Deconstruction Blog. The name is a play on words on “Uilleann Obsession”, and maybe I should have called this Uilleann Destruction. My intent is to document what I learn about building Uilleann Bagpipes, a complex and fascinating musical instrument. My hope that the knowledge that I gain will be of use to others.
I have been working on understanding what it takes to build Uilleann Bagpipes now for about two years, since 2005. After all this time I am really only to the point of a beginner; understanding the mechanics of this instrument, learning to play it, and assembling appropriate tools and understanding of mechanical process’ of construction are a huge and time consuming challenge. This seems is a zen-like enterprise, and it has been helpful to take a long-term view and approach, and to have plenty of patience for things gone wrong. There is no immediate gratification here. Welcome.
Posted by admin as Uilleann Deconstruction Blog at 7:59 AM EDT
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