I have an earlier post about problems with the back D that I was getting on my Brad Angus Chanter on a the first reeds that I was making with Tim Britton’s Deluxe Reed Making kit.
Well… I finally got one working but I had to change the size of the reed, different than what Tim suggested, to work on the Angus Chanter. But Tim’s design Did work on my Micael Vignoles Chanter.
So I did a long blog post on it, with lots of photos and some video.
Experienced reed makers may have a laugh but newbies like me might find it interesting.
http://uilleannpipesbeginner.wordpress.com/2013/02/17/my-first-uilleann-reeds-using-tim-brittons-delux-kit-book-and-video/
Man, that’s amazing! Thanks for the link, I’m sure that many will find this valuable.
Good Effort Bob!
If I’m not mistaking, Brad uses ONLY rolled staple for his chanters. I believe his chanters are specifically designed to play using this conical style staple design. Other makers like Geoff Woof and K@Q use rolled staples as well. I would think that if you are using brass tubing to make reeds for your Brad Angus chanter, your results will not be as successful as if you were to make a rolled staple based on Brad’s staple specs (hence the problems with the back D and second octave).
I have an order in for one of his mandrels so I can try to roll my own. He told me that he used to provide a staple mandrel with every chanter he sold but most owners never used it so he stopped the providing them.
It seems the Britton-style reeds do not have enough internal volume for your chanters. Hence, the absent back d and the wide octaves.
Great blog: I think you’ve got your head screwed on just right, Bob! The very least you’re going to take away from all this is the ability to keep your reeds working, which is very liberating.
(Last year I saw a well-known multi-instrumentalist refuse to perform on the uilleann pipes one night because his reeds were “too spongy.” I swore then & there I would never use that as an out. Nobody cares how well you can play, if you don’t. Anyhow, I’m abindingly convinced one of the worst things you can do, learning the pipes, is to treat the whole thing as a black-box system without any user-serviceable parts. 
)
Actually, you look to be well on the road to reedmaking competence. You’ve already internalized the need to practice reedmaking in a way that increases your understanding of how cane behaves, how reed & chanter geometry interact, and what the limits of reed-tweaking are (i.e., when to cut your losses and make a better reed, or use a different kind of reed altogether).
Please keep sharing what you learn about those things – many of us are still learning them!
Cheers,
Mick
Thanks for the comments.
One of the members who, on this site, goes by the name, BRAZENCANE, offered some help and we had a Skype session last night. He gave me lots of good advice but perhaps the best was this.
I need to practice more to learn all the things that a reed can do. Just being able to play the scales in tune is not enough. And unless I know all the possibilities I will really not understand where I want to take that reed. The second bit of advice, that I know is true, was that there was a large gravity associated with reedmaking. You can get sucked up into trying different processes and experimenting and start to drift from playing. That was happening to me. Bottom line. Keep practicing with the pipes and make playing with reedmaking as a part time thing.