I was lucky to get some video of piping, taking off Irish TV years back, one interesting snippet was of Leo Rowsome in his shop (complete with huge elephant tusk), turning a chanter - he drilled the holes in the square blank first - and making a reed, with a cutthroat razor. He’d take the excess cane off the top, and trim down the sides; how he gouged the cane down they don’t show. Handwound, with the mandrel in the staple. The other day I was grinding out some squeakers and got to thinking, hmmm, maybe Leo was on to something there…?
Also David Coultrop wrote a nice piece for the Pipers’ Review about using scrapers for reeds, instead (or in conjunction with) of the usual sanding cylinder, I ordered a set recently from Garret Wade, the one you need is the curved scraper. You can scrape out any curve you need, or touch up spots where the cane happens to be too thick at the sides. I like it a lot more than the usual regimen of sanding.
Kevin, this is a key aspect of the method Benedict K. uses (scrapers). He reckons the old timers usually scraped, as opposed to using any kind of abrasive, which of course makes sense.
The NPU DVD is worth the asking price just to watch him closely. I found that there was plenty I missed on first viewing.
You can use the french curve scraper, or one with a constant curvature, since the angle of attack will determine the effective radius.
Ted Anderson gave me a “French curve” scraper for exactly matching ANY width of curve of the cane slips, about 1978. I use it (even now) for removing the microscopic “hairs” from the sanding process, BEFORE I do my “polishing” bit that I got from Finbar Furey. I passed that on to Bill Ochs and through him to Tom Busby who rejected it…hence the David Quinn comment, in his 1st edition of the “Piper’s Dejection”, about “the controversial method of polishing”. But it works, Guys !! Try it !!
Leon Rowsome told me that Leo did scrape AND sand the middle out of the reeds…the part that was left out of the film of Leo, working with reeds,etc. Leo Purcell told me that L.R. used a dowel of 1 and 3/4 inch diameter. Leo Rowsome was going for that thin cresent moon, seen from both ends of the slip, said Leon ! Another thing Leon said was that his father tried to have a little cresent in the middle of the tip, on both blades, and not involving the corners, which Leo removed any way (the reed heads looked like paddles for a miniture canoe) Pas d’elle yeux Rhone que-nous ? Anyone? This is something you write down and give to Les Francais to confuse them as it makes NO CENTS IN FRENCH…not a centime! 100 centimes= un franc, S.V.P. What do they use with EUROS?
In the"Old Days" Reedmakers didn’t have wet and dry sandpaper in the different grades (220 / 320 / 400 / 600) but they DID USE scouring rushes! 1/8th to 1/4 th inch O.D. and with the little stripes of silica down the length of the stalk. Then there was SHARKSKIN ! Put that on your dowell and watch the powder come off. Another thing that Leo would do is put the new reeds into his students Practice sets and have them “Blow-in” the reeds. Any reed that showed promise was taken away and a fresh, newly made one was in the students chanter forthwith. For playing with other pipers Leo had a loud (stiffer) set of reeds he kept in a jar, and for solo work he’d take about 15 minutes and change out those for the easier set of reeds. This is from Dave Page, who played with Leo on R.T.E.
Good luck with your reeds and remember me when I can’t make 'em any more I’m depending ON YOU to keep me REEDED !! Sean Folsom
S’funny, I just ordered a set of scrapers. Meat Grinds think alike.
Kevin, if you are using a scraper, will you be setting up a shooting board and doing the scraping as per Benedicts method? Or are you for finding a way to comfortably scrape the whole slip from end top end? Keep us updated!!
Sean, any chance on an insight to FF’s polishing method?
Yeah, Summer 1975. Finbar would take the reed and rub it on his Kennedy chanter between two key blocks with the top part of the reed head pressed down, and supported by his index finger. Finbar was rubbing( with a circular motion) a little depression into the chanter. I asked him “What are you doing with the reed, Finbar?”… “I’m polishing it!” said he…Well, TWIGGING TO IT… I had read in Paul DeVille’s Universal Saxophone Method, under the heading “REEDS” there was a sentence about lower lip irritation from rough surfaced reeds. The cure was this: to polish the reed against a water glass. I had taken that sentence to heart, and had been polishing sax, clarinet and oboe reeds, from about the time I bought the sax book (1963). I never thought of polishing a bagpipe reed, till I saw Finbar rubbing a hole into his chanter. I modified that a bit though, as I do like to carry around MORE stuff. A famous Basoonist, Robin Howell, told me his teacher, Christlieb, used a fine porceline cup, as the texture was smoother on that, than any mere water glass. Now I polish all my cane double reeds…and nowadays, that’s alotta reeds! Polished Sean Folsom
Great stuff, Sean! Here and elsewheres.
I’ve just been holding the slip between thumb and ring finger, and supporting it with the middle and index. A few reeds have been opening up on the sides a bit…I’ve only been at it a week but have been in REED MODE and trying to crank out the little devils faster.
That NPU DVD is $70 plus shipping, does it come with a reed or something? Someone wrote an article about Ben’s reedmaking, I should dig that puppy out again. I’d been thinking a shooting block might help, I just turned out some dowels and am going to mount a bit of scraper on there, maybe I can dig in a bit more that way. You’d want a sideways shooting block I imagine?
I’m a bit of the bungler on reeds anyway, never made one for someone else - I’d probably get the shakes thinking about it all! Dan O’Dowd had the right idea - have a box full of reeds and if someone wants one they can try 'em until they hit the jackpot!
One of the things that I finds needs the most concentration is uniformity in the gouged slip. It’s so easy to miss a slight lean on one side or a thick area that you won’t see in ‘normal’ conditions and once the reed is tied up you won’t know what it’s causing a problem that may occur because of this.
I’ve been literally carving small areas of the slip with my gouge where I think the curvature looks suss, and then hoping the sanding will bring in the final desired uniformity, but I hope learning to use a scraper will mean being able to adjust the slips curvature per diameter tube of cane you are using (as BK says in the DVD, if you try to force your tools ‘measurements’ on the cane, it will mean waiting for the ‘right’ piece to come along and a lot of cane wasted meantime!)
Something I’m interested in trying, that I don’t think you can really do satisfactorily with anything other than a scraper, is the thinning of the slip internally where the blade portion will lie, this is something I read about in ‘Reed Design for Early Woodwinds’ by David HoganSmith. This is hopefully to bring that harder stiffer cane nearer the bark into play, so less scraping the V to get stability and tone.
I cut a section out of one of my scrapers and fit it into a dowel, all I did was cut a slot into it with my gent’s saw - was going to hold it in place with some nails but that scraper metal is hard - couldn’t drill through it even at full speed and leaning into it - ground a profile with my bench grinder and voila, a very rough scraper. I tried touching it up with a file as per instructions but it didn’t really happen - it must be a bear to touch up these French curve jobs.
Leo cut the tails to points in that bit of film, too.
David Hogan Smith is a student of Keith Lorraine (Penngrove, California) who ALSO did a small book on reeds for Early Woodwinds. Keith really knows his way around a reed head, and he took to polishing cane after I showed him its benefits. Keith also has a wonderful reed gouging set up and makes pre-goughed slips. He uses cane from the Rico reed cane suppliers, Stevens (father and son) of Healdsburg, California. The Stevens family used to have a field of their cane, growing right by Cloverdale, just north of the town, next to Highway 101. Each stalk of cane stood on its own, separated by a few feet from its neighbor, in orderly rows. In the summer, these stands were watered by the old fashioned “Rainbird” sprinklers. It was a sight you couldn’t miss, especialy if you were on “Donax patrol” as my wife Sharon calls the scouting of California cane from the passenger seat of a car!
Dan Sullivan (RIP), the Macroom, Co. Cork, UP piper of San Francisco , had a country summer home in the town of Sonoma, and he took me out to the creek in back of his house, where he cut the California cane he sent to Leo Rowsome. I needed some cane for drones and he just broke off some branches and handed me some very nice, dry stock that I made into many useable drone reeds. Ted Anderson and I have been back to that creek but it has sad to say, been cleared of any cane.
I have not seen the NPU video, but I understand that Benedict Kohler’s
method uses very little scraping or goughing at all. The cane is “wrapped” around the staple and after the head is tyed on, and the scrape on the outside of the reed head, allows it the flexibility to arch up?
If so, this would be more in line with the GHB reed making, where the slips are (flat) chiseled, with two different blocks. The 1st being the maximum thickness of the cane (at the base of the reed) and the 2nd chiseling makes the more flexible, top half of the GHB reed head. In fact when you “crow” a GHB chanter reed, the low tone is the more flexible half and the high tone is the base of the reed vibrating, in quick sucession. It’s hard to say WHEN GHB reed makers devised this method “to make reeds as plentiful as bullets, for the British Army” but the are two camps of GHB reed making, divided over gough versus chisel. The chisel camp believes that the tone has more sparkle, and the other (very small) camp, believes that there is more uniformity of response, less flat F sharps(the thumb and index finger note corresponding to the B on UPs), and less blow-in time. GHBers care to comment? I’ve made GHB reeds both ways and it doesn’t seem to matter to me…Sorry for that lack of controversy on my part ! Sean Folsom
Hmm, not really; Benedict’s method doesn’t spare scraping; it takes just as much out of the inside of the cane, but with scrapers. One thing which this allows is a gradual change of curvature from the lips to the tails, and it facilitates separately tailoring the flexibility of the tails with respect to the blades, without a sudden transition as one often gets by “gouging the tails”.
Seeing it would clarify that last comment, I think.
It certainly is an educational thing to see, and explains to me a ton about the tone he is able to bring to life through his reed making techniques. Brilliant stuff.
I don’t gough out the tails on UP reeds as Bill Ochs once told me that the lever effect of the staple on the blades is lost, and the tip of the reed head has a tendency to open up (especialy in the steam heating of most East coast USA homes). It also depends on getting a slip that is neither concave or worse, convex.
I was hoping somebody who has the NPU video ( gotta spend MORE money) would give clarification, Thanks, Dublin Bill! I was just going on something Ted Anderson was saying about Benedict’s reed method.
The main thing about reeds, besides the staple, THE BIG X-FACTOR, is the cane, as it is a non-uniform “vegtable” material. I learned early-on that recognition of the more flexible areas of the cane is more important than apparent “congruence” of the sides, regarding mere thickness of the blades. I use a pocket thickness gauge with a ball end, for the slip inside curvature. I get it in the ballpark of uniform thickness, but THE MINUTE you cut the reed slip in half you now have a YIN and a YANG side (California new-age influence on me). One side of the reed head resists vibrating, one side sands easier, and so on, just FEEL it between thumb and forefinger.
The ART in using materials… REEDY Sean Folsom
I also use a dial thickness gauge. But I use it only to determine if the slip thickness is in the ball park of where I want it to be. The cane’s
response to finger pressure is the best way to judge its potential response as a reed. I think it is a mistake to get too caught up with measurements, not that they aren’t important, but cane isn’t exactly a consistent material and needs a certain amount of lea way when working with it to get the best results. An adherence to rigid measurements will ultimately lead to a lot of wasted cane… and that is both costly on the wallet and on the mind/sanity of the reed maker.
So far so good. A shooting board like BK has in the DVD is the thing. Either to hold the reed in the centre as per his method, or constructing something for a ‘ordinary’ slip to be held at the tails. Either way, that slip has to be held really fast or I think you will end up with problems.
I don’t like the feel of the gooseneck one yet, I think the curve ended scraper is fine for all your scraping needs, but experience will no doubt tell (it’s going to take a little while to get used to it full stop!)
