Having trouble finding brass tubing for reed staples. Local hardware has all sizes BUT what I want. Ideas?
DJones
Roll a tube staple. You have more flexibility and non-cylindrical staples work better in many chanters anyway.
There’s no one “right” size, what does your maker use/recommend?
Bill
The chanter is made by BC Childress. I think if I check out a local hobby shop I might have some luck. I have had great luck with tube, but maybe I’ll try a few rolled staples. I have read in several places that some prefer these for tuning. Now I just have to find some copper sheets… 
I have about 7-8 tube staples of the right size, so it’s not an “emergency”. I am making a “batch” of reeds (I have started to make 15-20 at a time and then let natural selection take its course as I weed out the rejects…). I think I’ll try the rolled staple. maybe I’ll have better luck finding copper sheets. Nothing is open here yet, so shopping later…
thanks-
DJones
That is where you’ll most likely find them.
You can also find copper sheeting (0.18, 0.20, 0.22) at most hobby shops. Whenever I go to the hobbie store, I buy them out of tubing for concert (3/16) and flat (3/52, 5/32? I can never remember the size… lysdexia I guess…) reeding projects.
The tubing is pretty common. As Joseph mentions here, the 5mm stuff (3/16") outer diameter is generally what most makers will recommend for you to use.
I’ve had a very difficult time finding anything here but 0.025" copper sheet. NO one seems to know where to find 0.020" which isn’t much different, but a 1/5 reduction in wall thickness makes staple rolling a lot easier!
Over here you can only get the metric stuff, i.e. 0.5 mm wall thickness, 5mm O.D. and 4mm I.D.
That’s nearly 2% larger (area) on the inside, significant but it can certainly be compensated for. However the outside of the tube, at 5mm, is noticeably larger than the outside of 3/16" tubing, which can affect the way the reed blades tie up. This can be corrected for by filing the outside down a little more after flattening the end of the staple.
You might try looking for 0.5 mm copper, it’s available via mail-order I believe, and 0.5mm is 0.0197", i.e. 0.020"
Bill
I don’t have a digital caliper to measure with 100% accuracy, but the brass tubing readily available here is 3/16" (very slightly less than 5mm OD.) with an inner diameter of 5/32" or approx. 4.05mm.
The supplier I’ve found in every hobby shop here is K&S Metals. Their website sucks and doesn’t give much useful information, but their flowered hammers sure are pretty. 
I dont know where you are but http://www.hobbytown.com/ has K&S tubing…
Check your math, I think you’ll find that 5/32" is 3.97mm.
K&S is widely available through just about any hobby retailer in the states. Hobbytown is one outlet, but there are countless others as well. Many of whom might be cheaper. The local Hobbytown here went out of business a few years back, but there are still other local venues. I imagine just about any town or city would have a hobby or craft shop able to order in stock for someone.
Take that up with either the guy who marked up my calipers or the quality control guy who checked him! 
Take it easy Bill , Brian said “I don’t have a digital caliper to measure with 100% accuracy” 
Got what I needed at a hobby shop - thanks for replies. Got 18 reeds in process… of 23 that started as cane slips, natural selection has culled a few… Hoping for favorable ‘evolution’ of 8 or 10…
DJones
The 3/16" o.d. tubing does not have a 5/32" i.d.. I think the wall thickness is 0.014", if I remember right, which yields a diameter of 0.1847", which is 4.69mm i.d.. The 5/32" o.d. tubing has an i.d. of 0.12825", which is about 3.26mm. Check that math.
Ted
5/32 = 3.9697854667543287476843523489678556743287656744354986675647373277 mm
3/16 =4.762857694756563485968573928375848574839384837437457567667684674 mm
RORY
Sorry, Rory, but I require those to one more decimal place. Hate to be picky, but … 
djm
Usually I,d go a bit further ,but I didn,t want to come across as some kind of nerd !!
RORY
Mine does. Either my calipers are complete shite (which I doubt), the measurements aren’t standard across the board and the QC of the tubing suppliers of the world is highly suspect, or someone needs to go have a pint.
I’m voting for the latter.
At any rate, it’s funny to me that for something produced in the manner a rolled staple is (which almost always seem to be considered superior to tubing staples for tuning accuracies etc, and is yet much more open to fluctuation in manufacture), that anyone cares about this to a thousandth of a millimeter. 
Ted wrote in the Piper’s Review about 20 years ago about Wooff’s pipes, and how Geoff doesn’t use brass tubing for aesthetic reasons, and also because the tubing is 0.2% lead (used for extrusion purposes). I always wondered if this were true of K&S tube, which might account for certain pipers’ errant behavior but no, I wrote K&S this year and they replied that their alloy is purely zinc and copper.
Don’t suck on your ferrules, though. Actually copper develops plenty of verdigris with time, maybe if you’re complusive obsessive enough you should switch to the banjo.
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