Hello every body! I just wanted to share my experience with the weirdest staple I´ve ever seen in a practice set made by Dan O´Dowd in 1976 aside the replacement of the bag and bellows leather gusset and many other things of general manteinance, the time came to reed it up.
The staple had no taper, I mean a very narrow eye and the tube continues with the same slim section about 20 mm and suddenly the tubing as it comes (I throw out the original that was made of aluminum ID 4 mm 65 mm long)
I´ve tried several reeds with traditional made staples and no way, I made a brass staple as the original but 54mm long and guess what… it works!!
gotta tune many things but it works, good hard D, no gurgle easy 2nd octave. But I´ve never known about a staple with such characteristics.
Very interesting information Marcelo.
A few months back I was given a Dan Dowd chanter to make a reed for and I didn’t have much success. I tried all kinds of staples and reed heads and the closest I got was a reed that was in tune and both D’s were ok but not a great tone.
I’ll see the owner of the chanter soon so I might try your method again and see what happens.
Thanks Marcelo.
By the way, nice drones!
Tommy
Hi Marcelo,
is there a chance to get the reed going again? I mean - imagine - in 50 or more years time somebody - hopefully yourself - having a working reed made by Dan Dowd - a treasure. BTW, a friend of mine has a Bourke-O´Dowd chanter and I guess Dan made the reed (must ask him to make sure). It is the lightest playing reed I ever came across.
Hi Marcelo,
I´d really like to make and try such a staple. Could you give us more measurements?
Well thank you very much Tommy and Hans, but I want to clarify this, the original reed is not working, Ive made a new one respecting the staple style; on the other hand the staple style isnt MY method, it was the style of staple that came with the chanter. Ill post some pictures later. Ill have to try many staples with the same style, cause E is extremely sharp in both octaves, 2nd octave is progresively sharper as it goes up, I mean I just got the first step. Ill keep you informated.
contact Tim Britten. I am pretty sure he use to play an O’Dowd and I bet he can shed some light on his style of reed making.
Good luck
Here are measurements of a rolled, unsealed copper staple that Dan made for me as an example when I visited him in 1977:
Length: 52 mm
O.D. eye 3.5 mm
O.width eye 6.1 mm
O.D bottom 4.8 mm
I.D. bottom 3.8 mm
However, I might note that the reeds he made for me at that time all played a bit sharp of concert pitch.
Here is a message that I sent as a PM to another O’Dowd chanter owner:, which might be of interest for the list as a whole:
Dan O’Dowd gave me lessons in reed making when I visited him in 1977, but his extreme ‘v’ shaped style of reeds were all 1/4 tone above modern concert pitch. He published a useful recipe for reedmaking in An Piobaire number 3, which you can download from the NPU website, if you are a member.
http://www.pipers.ie/The slightly wider and longer reeds that I myself made for the chanter were in concert pitch, but I wouldn’t consider any of my own reeds to be good ones.
In 1995, however, Donnchadh Gough from the group Danu showed me his chanter, which is very similar to mine. Martin Kerrigan from County Wexford made the reed for it, which was playing nicely at concert pitch in both of our chanters. You can hear Donnchadh playing at:
http://www.last.fm/music/Danú/_/Banish%2Bmisfortune%252FTrip%2Bto%2BAthlone%252FTrim%2Bthe%2BvelvetHere are the dimensions i noted then:
Max head width: 13mm
scrape to bridle at 23mm
bottom of bridle at 26mm, 4mm thickness
Staple: hand rolled copper. no soldering. 4mm id, 5.2mm od.
total length: 78mmHere are some pictures of both ODowd and Kerrigan reeds:
http://rlongconsulting.com/design/kennedy/irish.reeds.aspYour might also try David Daye’s recipe for reeds that would fit in his Medium-Bore Concert D Chanter. The chanter bore dimensions listed there are quite similar to my O’Dowd chanter:, and reed measurements close to Martin Kerrigans:
http://polarmet.mps.ohio-state.edu/bdaye/makepipe/pcmb_rd1.gif
I’ve been playing a Dan O Dowd reed in my Quinn chanter since 1982. It’s the only reed that has EVER played a completely in-tune scale on that Quinn, that’s including the Quinn reed that came with the chanter.
I’m still playing it. Somehow the staple is just right for that chanter. One day I’d like to get a new head put on that staple.
What it sounds like:
Hi Panceltic, thanks for your post, Can you tell me if the top part of the staple is as I described above? Have you ever seen that staple apart of the head?
I´ve tried a narrower head ( 12.5 mm ) and a smaller staple now with better results ID 3.8 mm 52 mm long, E is still sharp in both octaves, it´s all a little sharp in general. I´ve made a long waist head, in the original cane the waist is longer, maybe that´s the answer.
hey thankd papuga for plugging my ( not at present available ) website . 
.
I have reeded a few really wide bore chanters and sometimes used a wire to rush the bore If the reed was close to in tune but having problems on some of the notes .
In one of rousomes tutors it mentions this in the same sentence as how to rush the regulators for tuning , easy to overlook , but its in there .
Sorry I’ve never taken the reed apart (afraid to).
I’m getting close to working up the courage to have a reedmaker take it apart and put a new head on it. It’s not a very good reed, but it’s the only reed that has ever worked in my chanter.