I hear a lot of you speaking about humidity variances and how this can result in inefficiency of the reed.
How does one determine if humidity is the 'true" cause?
Wait a few days.
Keith, you’ll see in late November. We’ll talk about it. Lewis
Keith are you having trouble with your reed???
“If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.”
It could be worth having a cheap hygrometer if you don’t already own one, to check the relative humidity in the room where your pipes are kept. It’s always worth knowing.
This would do the job nicely!
http://cgi.ebay.com/Brass-Analog-Cigar-Hygrometer-Glass-Face-BRAND-NEW_W0QQitemZ6208676623QQcategoryZ986QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
Just try closing up your place and setting the tea kettle on the burner. After an hour or so, play the reed for an hour while the kettle is still steaming. Or, wait till it has rained all day and night. Try the reed the next day in about a 70 deg. temp while it’s still rainy. You’ll have no further questions. 
Similar to my jetdry question, I was just wondering if their was definitive proof that humidity causes problems to the reeds.
Seth my reeds are fine…
Reeds are a living material and will behave differently as the weather changes. Buy an inexpensive hyrometer or read your newspaper for the humidity index and you’ll maybe see a correlation between your reed’s behavior and the humidity.
or play the chanter with your mouth for 5 minutes.
I find that if it is hot, sunny and the humidity is up around 90+% that day, my reed still works fine. If its rainy and the humidity is up around 90% that’s when it starts to soften (a bit).
Cheers,
DavidG
On a related note: does barometric pressure have anything to do with the way the pipes play? I have noticed that when the barometric pressure is very low my set tends to be a bit sensitive, and I have to back off on bag pressure or it will easily flip into the upper octave. When the barometric pressure is very high my set tends to play a bit harder, and I have to cover the chanter holes with a bit more pressure to prevent squeaks and squawks. Or is this actually a humidity thing? I will have to pay attention to both barometric pressure and humidity to see if there is a correlation.
Ailin
I’ve heard so much about weather and piping that I don’t know what to believe some times. I know someone who won’t play his pipes on a windy day - too much changing of atmospheric pressure. If that were true, you’d never hear piping on Ireland’s west coast.
Here’s what Tim Britton said about barametric pressure…
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?t=25046&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=colorado&start=45
- [quote=“mirabai”]
Barametric pressure is way too big a word for me. What I’ve noticed seems to have more to do with humidity. It’s currently 40% in my house in mid-winter Iowa with forced air heat. The reeds colapse a bit and loose a ltttle of their optimal vibracy. The drone reeds also close down and need to be manually arched. I never use wax or hairs as they they ruin the pitch stability.
I was once stranded for 2 weeks in central Wyoming in July while my broken down van was waiting for a gas filter. Although my reeds prefer 60% humidity, they don’t usually die altogether in the dry. This was a bit much though and towards the end of my enforced vacation the reed had totally colapsed and the sides had opened up.
I have no qualms about getting agressive with reviving reeds. Rather than giving up and making a new one I prefer to learn to deal with them; kinda like not believing in divorce, although it takes two to make that one work. Anyhoo, I typically will restore the arch of the lips by inserting a bit of cardstock cut to a taper slightly narrower than the head, indented slightly from the edges and wrap the head in thread forcing the edges around the “template”, blowing throught it to humidified it . That revived it suficiently.
I often do a subtler quick fix version on the fly to restore vibrancy by opening the lips with my lefthand thumb and forefinger while pushing into the center with my righthand pinky finger nail, forcing the edges to arch out.
Something like the above is often required n an ongoing basis btu is augmented by putting a teaspoon o fwater into the bellows and shaking it. This might need to be repeated every half hour in some conditions.
Thinkin’ about plastic again?
Tim
[/quote]
I think everyone has tried mouth-blowing their chanter at least once but that’s usually for a few seconds at most. 5 minutes, apart from being pretty tough on the lungs, would also send a lot of moisture past the reed lips. I’ve heard tell that of the lips of the reed get wet and subsequently dry out, they may become warped.
Or you could lower the temperature of the room until you hit dew-point, then chill it a bit more so the condensation starts to appear on the wall. then mop up the condensation with a rag and throw it out the room and lock the door. then gradually increase the temperature of the room say to 21deg C. And hey presto! no more humidity probs.
That is assuming your room is sealed off to external air.
PJ…KDMARTINKY wanted definitive proof that humidity causes problems to the reeds…
Obviously he hasn’t tried playing with his mouth.
Cheers,
DavidG
Reeds like wood are made of cellulose and lignin, you can think of it cellulose fibres glued together with the lignin. Both these compounds absorb water, which becomes hydrogen bonded and causes a differential expansion. This force is very strong and was used in the past to break up rocks; chisel a slot in the rock, fit a wedge of dry wood, pore on water, the wood expands and splits the rock.
Wood and reed expand in girth a lot more than they expand in length and this expansion is tied to the amount of bound water, which is tied to the humidity and temperature.
So basically as your chanter reed expands in girth it will tend to open up and become harder and flatter. The reeds having a large surface area to volume, will respond first to humidity change but the wood of the chanter and drones will also move at a slower rate.
While I’m here the Lignin in wood has a glass-transition temperature at which it goes from set glue to squigy allowing the cellulose fibres to move and the wood to be bent. When the temperature drops below the G-T temp the Glue sets again in the new shape. The glass G-T temp for dry wood is around 250 C but fortunately comes down to 50 C above 15% water content.
This is very useful, and I use it to set the tong height of my GHB drone reeds; use a spacer to the desired height, pop in a kettle, bring to the boil, remove and run under a cold tap. The tong stays at that height.
TTFN
John S