When he first started work as the music teacher for the Athena-Weston School District, Jacob Gau had to give himself a crash course in the bagpipes. Now in his second year, Gau has moved onto printing them.
The small school district north of Pendleton has had a bagpipes program for decades. But this is the first year the band has featured a 3D printed set of bagpipes. While the project started as an experiment, Gau believes it could be a gamechanger for a program that’s in high demand among students.
Students Timothy Taylor and Josephine Vorhauer pose with a set of 3D printed bagpipes at Weston-McEwen High School in Athena, Ore.
Photo courtesy of the Athena-Weston School District
The idea for 3D-printed bagpipes was seeded in a bunch of online videos. Gau had just become the teacher for the district, which serves the neighboring communities of Athena and Weston. Gau didn’t have a lot of experience with bagpipes, so he started watching a bunch of tutorials on YouTube and TikTok in preparation.
One of those videos featured a person playing a set of 3D-printed bagpipes. Gau was intrigued.
Gau had made trinkets and other small items on a 3D printer but not anything as significant as bagpipes. While the history of the bagpipes goes back centuries, he said it’s a fairly simple instrument to construct.
“There have been advancements, but for the most part they’re pretty much the same,” he said. “They’re decorative tubes that make noise.”
Gau’s idea turned into a plan after the district acquired a 3D printer this year. He found a willing collaborator in Andrew Griggs, a career technical education teacher and an alum of the bagpipes program.
Gau said the bagpipes produced by the printer came with a number of advantages. They were cheaper: while a set of traditional bagpipes can cost up to $2,000, the materials for a set of printed bagpipes cost between $500 and $600. The pipes and stocks are 3D printed while the bag is added at assembly. The printed bagpipes are also lighter and easier to carry than their traditional counterparts.
That’s important for a program where the bagpipes are in high demand with younger students. Gau said he recently asked a group of middle schoolers if they were interested in bagpipes after they performed “Amazing Grace” at a recent Christmas concert.
“The sixth graders were fervent,” he said. “They were like feral animals. All of them wanted to play bagpipes.”
Gau said there are a couple of drawbacks to the printed bagpipes. While he would like to make more, the days-long process it takes to make them is a bit of an “Achilles’ heel,” especially when the printer’s primary function is to serve the career technical education program. The 3D bagpipes produce a slightly different sound than the traditional instrument.
“To me, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “What matters more to me is that the student has a set of bagpipes.”
Gau said he knows how important the bagpipes program is to Athena and Weston. Community members have approached him, he said, and reminisced about how much they enjoyed playing in the band in the 1950s.
Gau said the bagpipes program started as an all-girls pep band in the early 20th century, a tribute to the Scottish immigrants that had settled in the area. Before girls sports were integrated into schools following the 1972 passage of Title IX, Gau said the bagpipes program was a way for girls to participate in extracurricular activities.
Today, the program is co-ed, and regardless of whether the instrument is 3D printed or not, Gau said it is the kind of thing that makes rural schools special.
“We almost get to make our own destiny when you’re in a small school,” he said. “We get to give our students an experience that can be completely out there and completely unique to us that they can carry with the rest of their lives.”
