Of Honeybees and Reeds.......

Uilleann Pipes
1

OK, bear with me just a bit. Ask any aerodynamic engineer and they can give you the facts as to why honey bees cannot fly: wrong power-to-weight ratio, too short for the wingspan, not enough wing area, etc. Well, no one told the honeybees, so they fly any way.

This same principle seems to apply to UP Chanter reeds. We all “know” that plastic reeds don’t work. No one told all those fellows making them in a warm, dusty foreign land, so they just keep making them, and by george, some of them actually play, in tune, regardless of the weather.

So, with that in mind, I tried the yogurt-container thing…to no avail. The plastic seems too soft, not at all like the imported reeds. Several days ago I replaced Old Glory, out in front of my house with a new one, not tattered and faded as the old one had become. The container was thin, clear, hard, but flexible plastic.

I proceeded to make a reed patterned after my imported one, and after just a little sanding, (eureka !!) it played. And, not badly tuned. Certainly acceptable for a first try.

I know this may start an argument, but wouldn’t it be nice to have a reed that played inside, outside, morning and night, in Louisiana, Kentucky and Michigan in the space of three days ?

2

Keep at it. It can work. The only reason I abandoned my experiments was that I got a good cane reed and someone for whom have respect tends to be a nay sayer. I have taken them up again with encouraging results. Screw nay saying and do your best! Remember: The laws of the physical universe change from workshop to workshop. And even within them from day to day. Sometimes chaos magic is on your side.

3

Bees fly because they flap their tiny little wings fast enough to create little vacuums at each end of their stroke, hence hefting them skyward for that split-second. Noone in their right mind would make an aircraft to fly that way, but bees did. Insane, but heck, it works. But nature doesn’t give a damn about logic, or well-established opinion, just whatever gets the damn things up into the air.

“Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!!!”

(Of course, that guy blew up.)

Mark

(Well, not historically, but it dovetails so nicely into my point, don’t you think?)

P.S. Watch films of bees flying, though, and you’ll cry with laughter. They’re really, really bad at it. Which dovetails nicely into someone else’s point … damn, now I’m all confused…