Just found old An Piobaire releasing (vol 3,No19 july 94) with AlanMoller reedmaking column (based in Cillian O’Brians method + chanter).
Any comments /experiments with it .
NPU has a video of Moller making reeds. It is actually more instructive for a new reedmaker than the new master reedmakers DVD, in that it shows all the mechanical steps involved in making reeds and why. However, I was not able to use Moller’s measurements for my chanter.
djm
Allan specifically mentions using a tube of cane exactly 25 mm in diameter, a final slip 13 mm wide, and a final sanding cylinder 82 mm diameter. These are the key points in Stages 1-5 and they give a finished slip of a very specific thickness and elevation.
The pencil shading is a neat trick that I have used, but once you’ve sanded it out, it is no longer a guide and you could be going deeper without knowing it (such as sanding in a curve motion or at an angle). The important points are not gouging too deep, or sanding too deep with the 70 mm block, or not sanding in a curve (the natural motion of the arm moving back and forth is a curve) or angle. In my opinion, you can easily dispense with the gouging, the 70 mm block, and the shading, and move straight onto the final sanding block after flattening the underside of the slip.
He gives tails of 28 mm for a 100 mm slip. The drawing seems to indicate that the corners are curved and maybe the tails themselves are made bottle-shaped, but he doesn’t mention either of these points. AlanB once posted a picture on this forum that illustrates this shape nicely.
In Stage 5, Allan says “first removing a small wedge from the centre line, cut the slip in half with a very sharp knife”. I never quite understood how you were supposed to cut a wedge. Cane bark is very tough. Rocking over the centerline with the sharpest blade you can find, then making the final push has always been what’s worked for me.
Chamfering the tails doesnt’ seem necessary with today’s binding materials, IMO.
Allan shapes 5 mm OD tubing to 47 mm length with the taper starting at 16 mm. He says “width of eye 2.7 mm”, without specifying whether this is measured from the inside or the outside. I’m pretty sure he means outside.
He says to insert to 33 mm from the lips, and that this “tunes the back D”. As he specifically states at the end of the article that this reed style is for Cillian’s chanters, this is not a crazy statement.
Stage 8 - although he doesn’t give a measurement for cutting the V on the flats of the head, he does say to do it in stages, and I suppose you could infer from the drawing and previous measurements given that he means it to end up around 18 mm.
This whole page is confusing. This paring of the “V shape” I believe to be similar to Eugene Lamb’s approach (which I have detailed elsewhere), in which you pare starting at the lips and moving back, keeping the lips the same thickness once you get some kind of crow.
This technique can be tricky because of the curvature. As a possible addendum to Allan’s description, I’d say that you pare only a small portion near the lips, first at the center, then out along the lips, keeping them even. Then you pare some more at the back of that cut, forming a V shape as you go back. You can sand as you go back, but because the V isn’t flat, best to sand perpendicular to a cylinder with sand paper wrapped around it.
I suggest making the secondary scrape by actually scraping, as opposed to paring. You are actually removing cane bark at the edges of the V formed in the “preliminary cut”. I see now that Allan actually says “cut” and “scrape” respectively in a deliberate choice of words.
Otherwise, he makes some nice points about tuning.
These dimensions would not work for some chanters, particularly the lengths specified, but they’re pretty standard.
Eric
Cutting the wedge is supposed to relieve the tension at the thickest part of the slip in the hardest part of the outer bark. I agree it is not an easy thing to do. I achieve the same thing by taking the edge of a three-cornered file and giving a couple of strokes to relieve the bark. I also have done this with cane drone reeds to ease pushing the razor blade in for the initial cut. In either case, you’re just trying to ensure that pushing the blade in doesn’t cause the reed to split.
djm
I just remembered something else in that article I always thought was sensible. When Moeller says use exactly 25 mm diameter tube of cane, he suggests using a template with a hole cut in it. This beats using a ruler or calipers to find the diameter because cane tubes are typically irregular in shape and lining up with the template will help you find a correct section to chop out. This can save on a lot of grief when trying to follow a reed making recipe. For a given slip width, the curvature of the sanding cylinder yields a particular inside volume when the two halves are put together. A corresponding cane curvature will give a resulting thickness (and relative amounts of pith), which in turn determines the mix of pith, underbark, and bark when the final scrape is formed. Trying for a particular thickness without considering the relationship of sanding cylinder curvature to cane curvature leads to frustration.
Eric