In tribute to Leslie Cowell, 1933 – 2025, who recently passed away at the age of 91, bagpipe.news is republishing an interview on pipe making with Les and his son Martin which took place at the premises of David Naill & Co Ltd in Minehead, Somerset. The interview was first published in Piping Today magazine in 2010.
by John Slavin
Les Cowell’s interest in bagpipes started in the Boys’ Brigade in London where he first learned to play. On leaving school in 1946 he thought he would like to be a bagpipe maker, and fortunately gained an apprenticeship with the famous London maker, Henry Starck, whose premises were only about a mile from where Les lived.
The Starck family had made bagpipes and other instruments in London since the 18th century, and Henry Starck’s forefathers first came to England as the instrument makers to the Baroque composer George Frideric Handel.
Les spent almost 10 years learning his trade with Henry Starck, before moving on to work for a few other instrument makers, such as Rudall Carte and Boosey & Hawkes. He started David Naill & Co in Chesham, Buckinghamshire, in 1976, eventually settling in Minehead in the West Country from where they run their business today.
The company name, David Naill, came from the middle names of Les’s son, Martin Naill Cowell, and David Apps who was the son of Les’s business partner at the time. It wasn’t long before the business was established, its reputation quickly growing along with demand, and Les’s son Martin joined the company in 1980.
The day-to-day business, reputation and commitment to quality established by Les is now looked after by Martin, though Les is still very much involved at all levels with the business and is a daily visitor to the workshop, casting a craftsman’s eye over all the proceedings. I met with them both in Minehead while they used a tag-team routine to answer their very busy office phone and keep the interview rolling.
The skills that Les gained making bagpipes with Henry Starck, and also when working on a wide range of high-quality woodwind instruments throughout his career, became evident as the young David Naill & Co started to gain a reputation for craftsmanship and excellence of finish which, as Les says, “did not need to be covered up with hideous black varnish.
“From the very start we wanted to set new standards in workmanship, everything from wood management to our silverwork and engraving,” said Les.
Martin continued, “We have a number of hand engravers, and some of them started working with us in the 70s. These guys were quite young when they started working with us. But they are now fast reaching retirement, which is a problem because their skills are not easily replaced.
“We worked very closely with Murray Henderson and Jimmy Mackintosh in the early days of development. We also had a lot of input from Pipe Major John Roe, Tony Macdonald and numerous other pipers.
“We have always welcomed feedback and have been receptive to what other people want. If we send chanters out and someone calls up to say the E is a wee bit flat or sharp or whatever, it doesn’t mean that our chanter is no good; it is all about getting a consensus, and if I got 10 people calling up to say there was a problem then I would have to take that on board.
“Our location has played a big part in driving us to set our standards high and keeping them there. As an English bagpipe maker you have got to be good, or else you are not going to sell a thing.”
Part of David Naill & Co’s success over the years has to be attributed to their solo chanter which has played its part in winning every major solo piping title for many pipers since the early 70s. It was way back in 1978 when Murray Henderson and Jimmy Mackintosh approached David Naill & Co to say what they were looking for in a solo chanter, and then helped in the development of it. Since then, in 2004, Jack and Terry Lee of Simon Fraser University Pipe Band worked with David Naill & Co to make adjustments to the solo chanter. “At that time we added a threaded reed seat, the throat of the chanter was slightly altered and a few of the notes were changed. They were not huge changes, but they were made to reflect the change in pitch over the years,” said Martin.
The most recent success for the chanter, was at the Gold Medal in Inverness in 2009, when Glenn Brown, William Geddes and Fiona Manson placed first, second and third respectively, all playing Naill chanters.
“There is a lot more competition in the solo chanter market and in bagpipe making in general than ever there was,” said Martin. “Modern machinery, and I’m talking about CNC turning centres and milling machines, made it a lot easier for people to make accurate chanters. That is the important thing which has happened in the last 10 years as more engineering knowledge has come into bagpipe making. If you look at a chanter it is simple engineering: to make a chanter the holes have to be a certain distance from certain points, and if you are making it by hand that can be easy to overlook. The holing down is the critical part and the advent of using CNC machines has made the market very much more competitive.”
At the same time as the changes to the solo chanter were made by Jack and Terry Lee, they also worked with David Naill & Co to develop a band chanter for Simon Fraser University Pipe Band. However, SFU never made the change to David Naill chanters and the company have had a lot less success with developing a band chanter: “It is quite political, and a very hard area to crack,” said Martin.
“The difficulty is getting a foot in the door, and we almost got it with SFU, but it wasn’t to be. The argument is pretty much the same as with solo chanters; if someone has been playing a chanter for 20 years and winning on it, why would they want to change it? The new chanter would have to be exceptional, or at least equally as good. It is a difficult one, and a hard area to break into.”
“After this disappointment we felt it was really time to take stock, and get back to the drawing board with our band chanter. We have, over the past year or so, worked closely with Roddy MacLeod to produce what we feel is now a very good balanced and polished product. We have high hopes for this chanter and first comments have been very favourable.”
When David Naill & Co started out in 1976 they were using traditional hand crafting methods to make pipes, switching over in the last decade to embrace technology. They were the ideal candidates to answer some questions about bagpipe making, starting with the wood itself: African Blackwood or Mpingo, to give the tree’s African name.
“The Latin name is Dalbergia Melanoxylon,” said Martin. “It is used for bagpipes and other high quality instruments as it is resistant to shrinkage and cracking, and has very good tonal qualities that people have appreciated for years.”
Years ago blackwood was delivered in logs and split and cut by the instrument maker, but as Les explained, “You can’t buy blackwood logs any more. The wood all comes to us cut into bagpipe sections, either from Africa or Germany, though I think they have actually stopped cutting in Germany now as it gives employment to people in Africa if the wood is cut up there.
“When we take delivery of the billets of wood they are in the square and slightly over length,” added Martin. “We then cut them off to the dead length, and bore each joint before storing them for up to five years. As the wood still contains a lot of moisture at this stage it is prone to splitting as it dries, so we varnish the ends to seal the wood and prevent problems like this occuring.”
Martin continued: “There are a small number of African blackwood dealers, and bagpipe makers all source their wood from the same places; whether they care to admit it or not. I could probably name half a dozen dealers, and we use a few of them.”
I have a few friends who have experience in guitar and stringed instrument making, and have often listened as they discussed the sound qualities of tone-woods and the techniques involved in choosing wood for high-price tag acoustic guitars. So I asked Les and Martin if there would be any similarities in choosing billets of blackwood to make a particular set of bagpipes.
“Most of the choice would come down to aesthetics,” said Martin. “The way that we manufacture pipes is to turn 25 sets at a time; so we would have boards with 25 bass tops and 50 tenor tops. If I’m making a top of the range set of pipes they would get first pick from the boards to match the bass and tenor parts of the drones. All this business about making the instrument from the same tree just doesn’t work, because you don’t know where it comes from. People will tell you anything when they want you to spend money, but the fact is that the wood comes in pre-cut billets, so you can’t tell if it has come from one tree, or two trees hundreds of miles apart.
“Having worked with blackwood for so many years, I can go over a board of 25 bass tops and know instinctively what is a nice piece of wood, a certain something that only comes from experience of working blackwood.
“We only purchase musical instrument grade wood, and believe me if it doesn’t come up to scratch it goes back. There is still a lot of wastage, and that is one reason why musical instruments in general are expensive. Pipe chanters, for example, cost £250 — a lot of money, but you don’t see the ones we throw away when they don’t quite come up to standard.”
So there doesn’t seem to be any tonal distinctions made when choosing wood for a less expensive set of pipes than for a high-price tag set. So in theory, you could pay a lot less and still get the quality of sound that a top of the range set would give you. So that more or less answered my next question, but I asked it anyway, and Martin had more to say on the matter.
“If you are asking me do you get a slightly better set of pipes if you are spending £5000, compared to someone spending £600, well of course you do, even if the differences are purely ornamental,” he explained.
“I’m just being honest, and I might get slated for that. However, the more expensive silver engraved set is not going to sound any better because we all know that it is the musician behind the pipes. I have been asked a few times, ‘can you make me a set of pipes like Alasdair Gillies plays?’ — ‘Yes, I can, but can you set them up like him and produce that sound?’ To my mind that only comes from years and years of dedication and hard work and not simply from making a purchase — any purchase.
“I could probably squeeze into Ronaldo’s football boots, maybe not his shirt, but certainly his boots. But is it going to improve my game, I’m not so sure…
“That’s not to say that it isn’t important to have a really well-made instrument and I think that we manufacture our pipes as well as any maker has ever done. I’ve seen lots of nice old sets of pipes, and I’ve seen a lot of rubbish. It doesn’t mean that just because a set of pipes is old that it is necessarily good,” said Martin.
“Roddy MacLeod plays an old set of Lawrie pipes. I’ve had a look at them, and they are a beautifully made instrument, they really are. However the tone that Roddy produces is again largely down to his own efforts and ability,” he added.
I was keen to get more of their thoughts on the very old sets of pipes played by some of the top players: is it simply down to percentage chance that a certain amount of very well made pipes with a quality sound will have survived, or has something happened over time to give the pipes special characteristics to produce such a sought after sound?
“There are lots of top players using modern sets of pipes. If you go on to YouTube and watch Gordon Walker, what is he playing on? A set of pipes that we made him in the early 90s. If players of that calibre could get a better sound from an old set of pipes, why aren’t they playing them?” asked Les.
“One of the most important aspects to instrument making is wood management: it is all about the seasoning of the blackwood. I feel there is simply not enough emphasis put on it, and people don’t really understand it,” said Martin. “It is very important to make sure that you manufacture an instrument from seasoned, stabilised wood — and by seasoning, I mean drying the wood properly.
“If you make instruments out of ‘green’ wood you get shrinkage and all the mounts fall off, or the wood warps. Cracking is a different problem, as dry wood can crack just as easily as ‘green’ wood on a new set of pipes. We spend a lot of time drying out the wood for a new set of pipes, and the first thing the customer does is blow moisture into them — combine that with central heating and air conditioning, it can be a nightmare.
“There are a lot of misunderstandings about wood. Moisture and humidity, or lack of it, are the biggest problems for bagpipes, and the bagpipe maker gets blamed for a lot which is outwith his control.
“In years gone by, bagpipe makers would generally just supply pipes within their locality so great changes in humidity would not be a problem. We make pipes in the UK which has a fairly damp climate, but send them all over the world, so need to ensure that when a customer receives a set of pipes, the mounts don’t become loose because the wood has dried out further after leaving us.
“Though we keep our wood stocks for up to five years, the length of drying time can vary depending on how dry the wood is when it comes in to us. Some of the suppliers would persist in covering all of the wood in wax which sealed all the moisture in, but that wood could have been sitting in Africa drying out for six months if it had not been covered in wax. So if I am buying wood for 200 sets of pipes it is of interest to me to know if it is covered in wax or not.
“Another important thing is that the wood does not completely dry out till it has a bore through it and the air circulates around it. We have a meter which can test how much moisture is in the wood, but I can tell from experience how dry a piece of wood is simply by tapping it on the bed of a lathe.”
Until 2004 David Naill & Co used only hand tools for making their pipes, whereas today the bagpipe drones are now bored with a gun drill bit on a CNC lathe. The tool of choice previously for that job was called an auger. The introduction of modern technology in part of the process has made the pipe maker’s job more enjoyable as it takes away a lot of the hard and dirty roughing work, but most importantly has brought a higher level of consistency and quality to the process.
“Boring drones by hand was time consuming,” said Martin. “I mean, I could get them straight, I could get them very straight, but it wasn’t any better. It makes me smile when I look at an internet forum and you read comments from people saying things like, ‘well in the old days they bored for tone’. I sit reading this stuff thinking, ‘hang on a minute, a quarter-inch hole is a quarter-inch hole.’ I’m sure the wood doesn’t know whether it has been worked on an automatic lathe or by a hand auger.
“The same can be said of CNC turning centres. They are marvellous things capable of turning to very fine tolerances. I believe these advances have not only made bagpipes more affordable but, when used correctly with seasoned stable wood, they have improved the instrument.
“So the business of bagpipe making has become much more enjoyable, and the quality of pipes more consistent now that we have machines to help in all aspects of production. The traditional methods were very hard on your hands and your lungs. However, the finishing side, the way the instrument is balled and creased (combed and beaded) has not changed by us since we started in the 70s and there continues to be tasks that cannot be done on automatic machines.
“It is a point of pride: it is not just about making money,” concluded Martin. “It is important for us as a company to have an instrument that people recognise as being good and want to play.”