Elder Drone Reeds.

Uilleann Pipes
1

As it was close to the perfect time, for harvesting Elder branches for drone reed making, according to legend, at Low Moon in Mid Winter, I was duly out in the cold Wind for a couple of hours today.

Luckily for me we have plenty of Elderberry trees in our garden. I was trying to find the right diameters for the reeds and looking for thick walled /straight-ish pièces. It appears to be important to find second (or third) year growth which will have the requisite strength of wall. I found this quite easily in the end by cutting branches that were growing close to horizontal ie. not the vertical runners that shoot up from the branches.

I’ve cut a couple of hundred ,assorted thicknesses, approximately to length and have brought them inside to dry. They look as though they will be ideal BUT…

I am looking for any recipies for proceeding. I have had several different descriptions of how to work the Elder twigs into reeds… and have even managed it myself ,many years ago. Having recently started to run a little low on my supply of Drone Cane ( I bought a Kilo of the stuff from Medir in 1978) I thought it time to try using this local /free material again.

The problem appears to be.. at what stage does one cut the tongue… some say do this when the wood is still Green and allow the pièces then to season and finish into reeds those that have not warped. This appears to make reasonable sense considering how hard the Elder becomes when dry making it very difficult to cut.

Other methods talk of burning the pith out of the centre using a hot wire…or keeping the sticks in a dark place to season.

The Elder reed is not so easy to make but will have a beautifull purring tone and lasts forever.

Any ideas greatly aprieciated… and Happy New Year to all. :party:

Geoff.

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Ronan Browne made a short video of his making an elder drone reed for his Kenna set, but I can’t it now.

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Maybe this
https://myspace.com/jameskennapipes/videos
: )

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I had a lengthy discussion/argument years ago here with a fellow in England who makes elder reeds, “stu” I think he called himself and signed everything with the Cool Cat smiley: :sunglasses: Forget what all we hashed out. I don’t think I’ve changed much of my modus operandi, especially using electric drills to get the pith out instead of the hot wire, which you’d be at forever, thinks me. That was Stu’s way of processing. A few years ago I bought a mini lathe and use drills in that now. A belt sander’s handy for smoothing down the ends if they’ve split, too. Technology is your friend. :sunglasses:

Don’t really know what’s ideal for seasoning, I just wait a few months and then process the whole batch, get it out of the way when I’m in the mood. Some guills just won’t do their stuff as you know. I’m not picky about where I obtain things, either. Sean Folsom and Ted Anderson told me to head up into the hills, Brad Angus and I tried that one winter and all the Forest Service etc roads were locked up…the idea was to find areas at high elevation with good drainage, but in the end we just went back to a tree farm Brad worked at for a while and had at some of their bushes, this was down low.

When I started at using elder I didn’t own a car and just took the light rail train up to the Portland zoo/arboretum, there was some elder growing along the roads there. It often snows up there when the weather’s cold enough. The other day I was picking through a bunch of old reeds from that stuff I made about 13 years ago and they still speak…really rough on the outside and instead of waxing the ends I’d just leave nodes in place.

A friend lives west of me up in the Coast Range and has his own acreage but he says the elder still growing around there is really diseased, as has been the case with any of the elder I’ve found in the hills around where I live, too, for some reason. A few years back I found some huge stands of it along state highways that head out to the coast though so I’m back in business. They say Patrick Hennelly made reeds with a bush growing in the backyard of his Chicago home so there you go. Chi Town is frickin’ freezing owing to being on Lake Michigan though…

Donegal piper Turloch McSweeny seeded the area around Gweedore with elder for reeds. Dan O’Dowd wrote about throwing all the sticks into a pot of boiling water with butter in it, I think…how about some kind of kiln drying? Or you could just leave it out in the sun, when the sun comes out, to quote Johnny Mercer… :slight_smile: Anyways best of luck, Geoff. Aren’t you going to have to open up the drone bores (exits?) to regain the balance on the volume, too, if you switch to elder? Recall hearing that you did that with pipes as cane is marginally louder/brighter. Or so they say…I’ve had some real screaming Mimi elder reeds too.

There’s all those other pithy woods too. Maple can be great for tenor drones - Norway Maple is just harder than all get out and the size is right. I’ve tried shoots coming out of some kind of maple stumps too, those are nice and straight and pithy but the walls can be thin. Never tried mock elder but they say that can work, too.

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So, Kevin, are you using maple twigs and cutting/splitting the tongue as you might for cane or elder? Please explain more…

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I think it was Mike Hulme who made elder drone reeds, cutting them from trees in the winter before sap flows, hollowing out the pithy area, then placing a brass rod down the tube to keep it straight while it dries, and letting it set for a year before splitting the tongue. Here’s a video on how to do it with a razor after the elder branch has cured. The tongue is not spit parallel with the grain like cane, in fact it’s not split at all, but cut with the razor rocking it along the sides until it reached the hollow center. 6 min video, but shows the whole process start to finish.

https://myspace.com/jameskennapipes/videos

Another interesting one, perhaps even better, using needle file to clean out the pithy center…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ5v5ymyDuM

Mention has been made that the European elder variety is best, but others seem to think the stuff here in Oregon is good too, esp on the east side, because it goes through extreme temperatures and humidty. One piper claimed elder worked so well, he was able to play his reeds on the hottest and driest days of summer, out in the desert.

BTW, that razor knife used in the video, I see them FS in antique stores a lot.

Brendon Ring is the expert, I think he’s in France too, not sure though. Ted too, has posted a lot about making reeds (drones included) from elder.

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All species are worked in the same way, it’s just twigs.

That’s an Opinel carbon steel knife. In the time he worked out the pith with that needle file I could have reamed out 3 guills with spinning drills. If the tube falls apart in the process it wasn’t any good in the first place. I use 6" drills, come to think of it I should shop around for metric sizes too…I always use something that’s undersized too. It’s great if the drill reams out as much of the pith as possible but you never want to push things if at all possible.

Incidentally before even testing an elder reed you want to blow out any stray pith, and repeat a few times until the reed is totally free of fibres. That pith is the nastiest crap ever, inhale a bit and you’ll be coughing all week.

I was told Ben Koehler ordered a shipment of European elder to fit up Michael Cooney’s old Coyne set, as American elder was unsuitable. Maybe up in Vermont the elder is all crap like it is around here? Or European stuff just trumps American. Whatever, one of the big draws for me is that elder is free, discounting the time/slight investment in procuring it, so I’m sticking with red elder. Haven’t tried blue elder, incidentally. It grows much larger - the book Champion Trees of Washington State lists a couple of monsters that approach 50 ft! - but size isn’t necessarily what you’re after, anyway, unless you want to make an elder saxophone or something… :sunglasses:

Who’s the high desert piper, Lorenzo? Steve Allely is in Sisters and he’s very much an outdoorsman - very respected bowyer and flintknapper, among other talents. I can see him knowing a thing or two about elder.

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What species of plant is it? Sambucus? (A plant or a tree?)

Is the berry end harvested?

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Huh? Sambucus is the genus of the plant in question, Sambucus nigra is the European variety. Most of these plants grow only to shrub size but some can become trees, using the definition of tree > 13 ft tall.

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Had to look it up. I guess it wasn’t the desert, it just sounded like it, and it was Mike Hulme again referring to his chanter reed “At the time I was using an elder reed made by Chris Bayley and it played superbly in zero humidity and 100 degrees heat.”

https://forums.chiffandfipple.com/t/stupid-drone-reed-question/85720/3

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Hmmm, so it starts off as a plant, but can grow into a tree? Hmm I see.

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Look it up, it probably grows all around you. Scroll down to Sambucus and look esp at the picture of “stem” under red elderberry.

http://oregonstate.edu/dept/ldplants/native-or.htm

Here it is…

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Yes it starts as a small bush… (all things start small) and those in our garden range from 2 metres tall to something over Kevin’s 13 feet… one is growing next to the end wall of our Barn and I think it is causing this end wall to lean into the barn ( the wall being 3 feet thick solid Granite!)… I currently estimate an angle of lean at 5°-6° , this in turn is pushing the roof along … several tons of Granite and Slate… I don’t want to be in there when that colapses !!

So this Elder tree has many other uses… the Berries make fine Jams, wines, fruit juices etc.. the Flowers make wonderfull Lemonade and the bark is usefull in medicines. It was called “The Witches Tree” and some supersticious people would not cut or damage them for fear of having a spell cast over them.

Looking at Ronan’s video worried me… I certainly would not use a Cut throat razor in that fashion… having had my share of accidents with sharp implements (I once stuck an Opinel knife right through my left hand )… I would prefer a safety razor blade which can be worked into the wood in a similar way.

I like the idea of drying the pièces on a metal rod so they stay straight… perhaps it could be possible to cut the tongue whilst the wood is still green ( and soft) which would be a lot easier, then insert the rod and wait for further seasoning ?

Kevin, I don’t understand your 6" drill comment… a 6" drill is six inches in diameter.. which would make a drone reed for a Foghorn..

Still thanks for all the ideas so far… I like the Free material part too… when I bought my Kilo of Drone cane back in '78 I think it cost me about $20… and now they want one Euro per stick! ( A kilo of miniature cane for drones is a carton 18" long by 12" wide and 4" deep!!.. approximately).

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You can clean out the inside of the tube with a small piece of 0000 grade steel wool rolled into a ball the size of the ID of the tube.The ball is pushed into the tube and worked back and forth with a piece of wire.

RORY

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Ah, ok now I understand…

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To what degree I am unaware, but I’m sure it has such uses; in general, though, it should be borne in mind that the seeds, leaves and bark are toxic if ingested, and most particularly the roots. I read somewhere that one root can kill a pig. The wood itself is harmless, but the berries should be cooked.

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Here’s the old thread - http://forums.chiffandfipple.com/viewtopic.php?t=36644&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

I “imported” a few twigs here to Sydney about 20 years ago and the resulting bush is now huge - and fecund.
But, perhaps due to climate or nutrient differences its impossible to cut a tongue when dry and hard - just too tough
and woody.

So, all done when green and dried out on bamboo skewers with a wrap of cotton to stop too much torsion.

M

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It’s a most useful tree. Use the flowers to make elderflower champagne in Spring and the berries to make elderberry wine in autumn. Cordials are good too. I’ve never made pies with the fruit, but they’re supposed to be good.

Lots of other uses too.

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perhaps it could be possible to cut the tongue whilst the wood is still green ( and soft) which would be a lot easier, then insert the rod and wait for further seasoning ?

Ken McLeod advocated cutting the tongue (and tying it down) before drying, in his writings for the SRS (or maybe in his e-mails to the SRS membership)

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Ennischanter: if you live east of the Rockies, I would recommend S. canadensis. Of the two eastern N. American elders this is supposed to be the better for reeds. It has the black berries, whereas the other has the red.

The European elders are much woodier than the N. American species.

t