After several attempts at a few new reeds I seem to be running into a problem with the final pitch when I test for the crow. Several of my reeds are corwing at or very near to G (which is what I’m shooting for) and then others with seemingly identical staples, cane and scrapes are consistantly coming out sharp - usually around C or C#.
Can anyone offer some insight as to why this might be?
Thanks.
The first thing I would examine would be the binding…too far up and you’ll get a sharp unpleasant crow…more like a squeak.
Actually, I’m binding lower than I have on any other reeds - barely past the end of the staple. And while the crow is fairly stable (not too squeaky) it’s the wrong pitch and the reed doesn’t play well in the chanter. I feel like I’ve missed something big here, but on the other hand, using the same build techniques, I’ve had some reeds turn out stellar. Hmmm…
Off to start on another slip.
…OK, then check your placement of the staple within the reed blades…is it too far or not far enough? I am wondering, by what means (tool) are you measuring the cane thickness?
I am sorry, but do you cut a place to seat your staple, or do you leave the slip without such a place?
I dropped mine like that once. Naturally it was in winter and I was outside. Had to wait till spring to find it again. :roll:
djm
slight bed is gouged out for the staple. Otherwise, I don’t know if I’d be able to find a way on God’s green earth to bind the slips without either tying up to the lips to get a seal on the sides, or spliting the cane from binding too hard. And again, the binding is exactly the same length both externally and relative to the staple and cane as it has been on the last few reeds. It’s just strange. The bridle sits either just above (1mm) the binding or actually against it. This placement seems to work the best.
Prior to tying on the blades (to the staple), do you bind them (the blades)together?
I apologize for the rake of questions, I am just trying to figure out what you are doing. 
No worries Joe. Glad you’re willing to offer some assistance. And yes, I am tying the heads of the slips together prior to binding. I’m inserting the staple just shy of 7/8" into the slips (which I’m hoping will help to cure my sharp second octave B and C# issue). The scrape is between 0.87 and 0.90" long, and the sides of my slips tend to be fairly parallel. Wish I had a camera with a decent macro lens. I’d just shoot some photos along side my calipers. sigh But perhaps this gives enough to make a guess with? Also, the staples are pretty standard…2" long, with a taper just a hair over an inch long and an eye of about 0.06"
Are your staples tube stock, or rolled? Does 0.06" translate to 3-3.2mm (I do not have a good head for conversions)? I know this seems like a useless question, but it helps me to think about what you are working with. Also, if you use tube stock, do you ‘ream’ out the ends of the staple prior to shaping and tying?
edited for measurement’s sake 
…sorry, also, what kind of cane are you using? Where did you get it from and what age (if you might know) is it?
Tube stock. Formed on a staple using measurements given by Pat Murray (it’s his chanter after all). At any rate, the same staples have worked fairly well on an earlier attempts, but I haven’t been able to get a new set of slips crowing low enough yet. Am I not scraping far enough? Maybe I’ve scraped too much???
The cane is from Seth Gallagher. It’s the same cane I’ve used for the past two years.
The staple eye opening is what I was refering to - 0.06" = roughly 1.5 mm, and yes, I use a dremel to cut and sand the staple tubing to length, and then ream out the ends to debur them. Just enough to sort of round them off, not really opening up the internal diameter or anything there.
You may not be scraping enough…I HATE that part of the process most… and it sounds like the cane isn’t the cause eaither. Do you moisten the tails prior to binding? How long do you let the reed set, before you give it the ol’ college try?
By what you have already written, you have had success making working reeds utilizing the method that you know best, I wouldn’t change this method. Instead, continue to use it. Chances are, it is ‘worker error’ more than it is anything else.
Brian Lee, contact me via PM, and I will share some stuff with you. [/i]
What you don’t want to humiliate me publicly? 
C’mon man, I can take it! Choose your weapon…Donax at dawn? Regulators at twenty paces? MWAHA HA HA HA 
P.S. Send an email your way…
Well, I’m sitting here having just cleaned my carpets (as clean as they’re going to get) for the holiday tomorrow/weekend, noticing how quickly they’re drying back out, and I’m now barking at my son to haul up the humidifier from the mudroom downstairs. So I’m thinking in terms of my cracking lips and mainstock that has finally started to slip around from some annual reduction of size.
As far as calipers go and a crow, well, keep scraping or sanding or whatever you do, in the proper area, until it comes down to where it works in your chanter. I don’t know if that really means any specific pitch at all, but at some point you’ll pop it into the chanter and it’ll start working–first with an unstable bottom D, and then with more scraping, bridle/opening messing about, you get bottom D stable and usually at the pitch you want it to be. Frankly, since this is dead of winter and we all have central heating, in my case it’s heading for 15 below zero F (hey, trust me, it’s cold on either scale) and the first really nasty cold weeks of winter here in Minnesota, I’d set up a winter reed to work in the winter and forget all about what a manual or a reedmaker or pipe maker “normally” recommends. It’s you in your locale with your own reed, made your own way, however similar you tried to follow the plans.
So scrape them and play them and scrape them and play them and bridle them and maybe snip them and then scrape them (in your case don’t snip because you’re already sharp you think) or whatever, but make it an utterly reactive process based on how it actually works in your pipes in your climate at your time of the year the way you make reeds. Blade thickness etc. is nice for general design, but finishing a reed really has nothing to do with measuring how thick you’ve scraped or sanded or cut. Start with extra and removing it until it works basically. Then you can take a couple out that work months from now and see what pitch they crow at or how thick they end up generally if you really need to know for future reference.
There’s a lot more about how the crow responds or how the reed responds relative to how it crows, than what pitch is seems to be at, outside a chanter, sucked in at whatever mostly random pressure you happen to be sucking in in at at the moment.
Royce
(As usual, be prepared to lose a few.)
Well, after a bit more scraping, I was able to get a slightly lower tone in the crow along with some improved playability. Not great in either case, but improved from what it was. I still can’t help but think I have missed something that I must have done earlier…but I can’t for the life of me figure it out. Oh well - they’re only reeds right?