NOTE: I'M STILL EXPERIMENTING WITH THIS THING - THOUGHT I'D PUT 
WHAT I HAVE TO DATE ON THE WEBPAGE. CHANGES LIKELY.

The wine-bladder removed from wine boxes makes a very simple and
usable "goose" when attached to your practice chanter. 

Such gooses (geese?) are a great help in learning to play (or
practicing) bagpipe. They're a lot of fun too.

The illustration is self explanitory. As in most of my "creations",
nothing much is critical. 

A few construction notes:

- After jamming the corks in place solidly, I made sure they'd stay 
  by wrapping on a couple of winds of black electrician's tape.
  
- Chose the size PVC pipe (for the chanter stock: - "F") that is just
  larger than the practice-chanter's plug-in part. Then wind on waxed 
  cord til the chanter fits snugly into the PVC stock. If not too much
  is needed, dental floss works great.
  
- A dab of silicone glue applied to the tubing where it goes through 
  the corks helps seal & secure things. 
  
- The described water-balloon check-valve works very nicely. I tried a
  number of different balloons & configurations, but this was best.
  The reason for the eight or ten small holes is that with one large 
  hole, the thing is very prone to "raspberry".

Dennis Havlena - W8MI 
Mackinac Straits, northern Michigan
2/14/01

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