Hi all,
can any of the reed masters who have experience with harvesting Arundo Donax tell me when the best time to harvest the cane is? There are several stands of it growing near me which I want to take advantage of. Thanks in advance.
DavidG
when the sap is lowest. I harvest in early January, here in Alabama. I prefer standing dead though, that which died in the wilde. i guess around winters solstice would be a good time 
you would have an opposite time with your season difference.
tansy, (I’m not a master )
I agree with Tansy. I am also no master.
Also, as you live in sunny Oz, winter for you will be during our “summer” here in the states… adjust harvesting time accordingly. 
I harvest only cane which has died where it grows. You should avoid cane which is too long dead by rejecting tubes with much grey mold on them. Peel away the leaves and look. Trying to cure green cane for UP reeds is a waste of time. You should also try to develop a feel for the relatve softness by pressing your thumb nail into the bark. I harvest drone cane when the sap is up in the summer. Cut it green and dry in the sun until the green has turned yellow. The sap adds springiness to drone cane.
At midnight during a full moon on a November night. First and foremost, turn your jacket inside out… this is very important! Then, walk three times anti-clockwise around the stalk you have chosen - or has it chosen you!? No knives should be used, you will upset the wee folk! Grab the stalk between the third and forth nodes with your left hand and twist clockwise three times. If the stalk doesn’t come loose select another stalk.
No other techniques should be used. You are messing with forces beyond our realms of conception.
Patrick (Lepraseání Thruckalee Howe)
Patrick is an underestimated master of arundo harvesting.
I do ask the Blond Possum Goddess for permission first, even for the standing dead, and hum a jig backwards using only a buck knife that has been warmed between a womans breasts solely for this purpose.
tansy
Yup…which means I better get around to doing it as soon as possible…
Thanks everyone for the info…interesting point about the drone cane Ted…so chanter cane in winter, drone cane in summer…
Patrick, we don’t have wee folk down here, but our wetlands are inhabited by Bunyips so I’m guessing I’ll have to placate them in some manner not yet known to me…
Cheers,
I’ve heard that a lot of people prefer cane that has died in the wild, but i’m interested to know why you think that cutting and drying fresh cane for chanters is a waste of time. Is it because the 12 months to 2 years of drying is too long to wait when you can simply find a dead piece ready to use, or does green cane make inferior reeds in comparison?
Interesting comments about the drone cane… Will have to try this one out.
i have cane I took standing dead that I have had for 6 years now, the biggest problem I have is finding cane large enough diameter to use.
sometimes i wonder if there is an optimal age?
reed talk is good
That should be… harvest dead chanter cane anytime you can and drone cane in the summer…
The usual age to harvest green cane for wet blown reeds is two years old. Cane usually dies after 3 or 4 years. I got my harvest info. from Dan Sullivan who supplied California cane to Leo Rowsome and others. I have tried cutting and curing (not drying) green cane and never got as good results as I do with dead cane. Cane dries fairly quickly. Curing takes longer. Curing is giving the sap left in the cane time to be broken down, by bacteria and viruses, to where the cane stops changing (as in hardess and flexability). Most reed makers, including oboe and bassoon, find 3 years is ample time to allow the curing process to take place. Microwaving or baking it to hurry the process usually results in harder cane. There is no substitute for time. You can make reeds from dead cane right after harvest. The reeds made may or may not change over time. Curing cane reduces these changes. Many reed makers (incl. oboe etc.) who buy bulk cane will set it aside for two or more years before making reeds as the suppliers no longer cure the cane before filling orders. I let the dead cane I harvest sit up in the rafters for at least two years ( dead cane can be counted as having most of the first year of curing already) before shipping any out. I don’t think Sampson cane has any additional curing time on it. (Joseph can set me right if this is not correct.) Again, some reeds may change in playing characteristics as they cure over a couple of years, if the curing process was not long enough. I find less change in drone reed cane and usually only cure it a year or so before using. Some chanter and regulator reeds are much more sensitive to curing change. Medir says he is sending cane which has grown only one year as soft cane. This produces rather thin walled tubes. It may or may not work as well as cane which has died in the field.
I also find that cane from some locations to be hard, even when harvested dead and additional curing time allowed. I can harvest tons of cane locally but it is too hard for good UP reeds. Cane comes out of the ground the diameter it will be when fully grown. I used to only harvest 7/8" to 1 1/8" cane and those diameters are hard to find as well. I travel over 100 miles one way to where I have found cane which is soft enough and large enough, probably due to genetics, soil composition and weather. Anyone wanting hard cane, I will be glad to ship the local stuff for less than the price of the soft cane I supply. I am revisiting sites which I formerly passed up because there were no 1" diameter tubes in these stands. A stand of cane needs to be fairly old before part of it will produce the larger diameters. A lot of makers are now requesting from 18 to 22mm diameters. It used to be only Geoff Wooff that I sent smaller diameters. The first time I sent Geoff some was when he was still in Australia. He wanted 20 to 22mm cane. I was about to burn the lot of the smaller diameters when I got his order. I was glad to find a use for it rather than for a couple of hours of warmth in the workshop.
hi all
this is how they’ve done it with spruce for violins lutes piano and guitar soundboards in the Alps for hundreds o’ years. - see links bellow
I’m awating delivery of gutar tops. air dryed for ten years with maximum hazelfitch - think 3D crushed silk effect.
Double the price o’ your “Best Quality” on production guitars, are they worth it ? I think so.
I’d pay a lot more for soundboards produced in this way if I has to, the soundboard produces the instruments voice - what does cane do in a chanter?.
Someone will need to make reads outa this material and see, oh the old stuff is best.
http://www.tonewood.ch/moonwood.html
http://www.best-eurospruce.com/4.html
yours Un.
The quality of the cane is the biggest variable in reed making and the reed has the largest influence on the tone of the chanter. The cane is roughly comparable to the spuce for a sounding board, but for different reasons.
The sap in cane does not run in a layer just under the bark like trees etc. It runs in fibrovascular bundles (little groups of tubes) which are distributed throughour the pith, with the largest concentration just under the bark. The soft cane has less concentration of bundles than the hard cane. As these bundles contain the sap, they are also the most dense part of the cane. Less bundles yields softer cane and a lower depth the cane will sink in the sink test. This may be an inherited trait rather than being due to nutrients or weather influences. Any botanists here have any knowlege of this? Wet reed makers describe the soft cane I and many other reed makers prefer, as being coarse and stringy and not desireable for their reeds. This is because of a higher percentage of water absorbing pith. There is such a thing as too soft of cane, but I have not found much of that. It is finding soft enough cane, which many reed makers prefer, that is my goal when checking out new stands of cane. It is fairly scarce here. If you are investigating your local cane, you may look at a lot of areas before finding suitable cane. Sampson cane has found it in So. California and others, like Joseph Smith, have found it where they lived. YMMV
That should be… harvest dead chanter cane anytime you can and drone cane in the summer…
Phew, I got it right in Spain then - not through careful research but through not being able to take kids out of school for a month any other time! Pretty happy with the drone cane I got. Chanter cane a mixed bag / curate’s egg / radiohead album / british summer.
I’ve enjoyed reading this thread so far. It’s interesting to see what people have to say about the cane harvesting process. I would have liked to added my own two sense to this topic sooner, however I was away on holiday in (where else) N. Ireland/Republic and London and just returned a few days ago.
Ted has already elaborated quite a bit, and since I learned much of my own harvesting, storing, and sorting tricks from Ted in the first place, I don’t need to be redundant.
I agree almost entirely with what Ted has already said. I also agree with Ted that cutting green cane doesn’t produce the best cane. In my own efforts to harvest green cane and then season it, I’ve never had it produce good stable reeds. I’ve made some nice sounding, good tonal reeds from my own green cut/seasoned cane, BUT within a week to a month they all became VERY unstable or collapsed. IMHO I believe that cane needs to die and then season where it grew. Something about the cane stalk still being connected to the plant when it dies allows it to cure or season correctly, instead of curing somewhat artificially when cut green and dried/cured in the sun. I believe when you do the later, the cane seasons prematurely and isn’t stable. However, that said, I’m still experimenting a little with green or partially green cane.
One great thing about cutting cane that is “dead-standing” is that you can cut it anytime year round. If it is properly “dead”, it will not have any green left nor any sap remaining, so it is good to harvest. So you are not waiting around “At midnight during a full moon….” etc (thanks for that Pat, I about wet myself). WARNING- don’t cut or harvest cane that is to dead (extremely soft and discolored or grayish). A way to tell this kind of cane is to cut a tube of it, and see if you can crush or break one end of the tube with your hand or both hands. Many times it will crush or fracture. If it slightly cracks with two hands of full pressure, then it should still be ok to use. (I learned this method entirely from Ted).
Ted said, "I let the dead cane I harvest sit up in the rafters for at least two years ( dead cane can be counted as having most of the first year of curing already) before shipping any out. I don’t think Sampson cane has any additional curing time on it. (Joseph can set me right if this is not correct.) "
Once I harvest the cane, I don’t set it aside for an excessive amount of time (usually about 6 months to 1 year). However, this is for a couple of reasons.
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Almost all of the “dead standing” cane that I harvest has been dead for quite some time. How do I know this? Well, when I go to retrieve a stalk from a stand or bush, approximately 9 out of 10 stalks simply pull free at the base of the stalk with a good tug. How is this possible? The cane has been dead standing long enough that the soil (and moister in the soil) at the base of the stalk has begun to decompose that part of the stalk. This method of just pulling the cane stalk out of the stand is actually the main way that I know the cane is ready to be harvested. If I’m harvesting and I come along to a stalk that looks dead but it doesn’t pull out without a lot of strain, then I know it isn’t ready to be harvested. Where I harvest, if I am patient there is more than enough good cane ready to be harvested. No need to harvest stuff that isn’t ready. Now, it would be my belief and estimation that in order for the soil to decompose the base of a stalk of cane that much, the stalk would have had to of been dead standing for at least 2-3 years and possibly even 4-5 years. So the cane I harvest almost always well seasoned when I harvest it.
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In the last year and a half, I’ve sent cane to probably 50 or more different people. In that time, I haven’t had anyone contact me to say that the cane (or reed they made) changed unfavorably with time. As a reed maker myself, I know that cane reeds need to “break in” or “settle in” with time, as Benedict Koehler states on the NPU reed making video. But I’ve had no reports of drastic reed changes involving change over time.
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In my own reed making experience using my “dead-standing” cane, it has proven very stable. I haven’t had any collapse or change, and I currently play a couple of my own reeds that are over a year old now. For example, as stated, I just returned from cool and humid Ireland where I played quite a bit (inside and outside). My reeds played fine and strong with only a slight bridal adjustment, even though they were all made and used to playing in dry 15-25% humidity Bakersfield.
Anyway, that’s just my two sense about cane and harvesting. HARVEST DEAD STANDING CANE THAT IS WELL DEAD BUT NOT TO SOFT.
All the best,
Glad to hear from Joseph. I am in No. California, while Joseph harvests in the drier So. Cal. The dead cane where I harvest is subject to fog. My most productive area has a lot of fog, so the dead leaves wrapping around the tubes can be moistened daily. This results in a lot of it having from small to greater amounts of grey mold forming on the tubes. A few miles away is a smaller source which is protected from the fog. That cane has little grey mold on the tubes. The foggier area cane has too much grey mold after the first year dead. I don’t know how long the protected cane will remain useable. The cane Joseph is harvesting may certainly last in much longer standing dead in the field, than the cane I get, due to less mold producing moisture. The bottom line is the stability of the final tubes which are being used to make reeds. It sound like Joseph’s cane is more field cured than that which I am curing indoors after being dead at least a year so it reaches stability. I certainly hope all this long rant about harvesting cane will stimulate others to search out their local cane and have the information needed to utilize it. Don’t give up if the first cane you find seems too hard. Look in sandier soil and different locations to try to find the softer cane. The more producing areas the better off we will all be. Cane suppliers for wet reeds don’t really focus on what works best for dry reeds. They have plenty of market for their product and the relatively small amount we use is of limited interest to them. Many have made reeds using the hard cane, but many UP reed makers prefer the softer cane which specialists like Joseph and myself supply. Keep on trying your local cane.
Thanks everyone for the positive and highly beneficial input. Great discussion… 
Hi, I can see this thread dates back to 2009, so I hope it’s not too late to resurrect it! I’m in New Zealand, currently undertaking a PhD in the reconstruction of 17th century double reeds and reed making techniques (specifically around the early hoboy (“baroque oboe”) and also shawms). I have independently come to the same conclusion that I think dead-harvested cane is broadly the way to go, for historical reed making.
I’m curious though, can you tell me what properties you look for in cane for your chanters? I’m looking for something that’s flexible and whose bark can be readily compressed, but ideally with enough “strength” to withstand high playing. (So far, all of my wild-harvested cane kind of falls over when it comes to playing in the upper register; but generally, it seems a reasonable fit with historical evidence.)
Have you found a difference between dead-harvested cane that’s in different years of its life? Most of what I’ve dead-harvested has been either quite soft & spongy (and presumably not ridiculously old); or else hard as a rock, and (based on where I found it) probably on the order of 10 years old or more.
I probably actually have about a million questions, if you’re still monitoring this post and have the wherewithal to answer them 
…
Thank you!
Sharon