I’m updating my reed making website
(http://home.wxs.nl/~ejthart/Reed/reed.html) and the reed making cost/time
discussion on the email list inspired me to put in a database section
Although this site is still under construction I’ve put it online so that
all you reed makers out there can use the specifications database. The
general idea is to build a database with the reed specifications of all the
pipemakers, dead or alive… It might be helpful to reduce the time you need
to make a reed for a ‘strange’ chanter…
So if you are a pipemaker and you want your chanters to sing in tune please
add your specifications. Or if you are a piper and successfully reeded your
chanter (more than once) please add your specifications. If you have contact
with a pipemaker that is not online print out the form and ask him to share
his reed specifications and be so kind to enter them in the database.
It’s a great site. I think this should be in the FAQ page if it isn’t already. If you don’t get something squawking from that, then, well, I just don’t know… I’m off to play with a 53mm tail sander
Alan
NB. The “Moller/Rogge design” is pretty much from Cillian O’Briain I think
Alan, you read my mind. I may have some time in the next couple of weeks to work on an update, but things have been crazy busy at the day job (gotta keep that so I can pay for my pipes and Tionols!)
You are right Alan, but when I made the website I didn’t know that Cillian was also using this method. However Kevin Rowsome told me that his grandfather was using this ‘chamber gouging’ sometimes. So who was ‘first’…? I really don’t know.
Thanks Phil. But as you can see in the database there is very little interest among the reed and pipemakers to share their reed specifications. And that’s a shame because I think those specifications could really help pipers to reed their own chanters successfully. But maybe it is seen as a threat to their own reed making business. Anyway because there is no interest I stopped putting any more time in the project. Maybe if I have time to spare I’ll pick it up again.
This isn’t about people handing over their goods, it’s about sharing knowledge. Evertjan is doing what countless others in pipemaking/reedmaking do/have done, and that is share the info to stop the pipes from practically vanishing again and to help people wrestle with a bastard of an instrument.
Example: Pipemaker A makes great pipes, but his reedmaking is shite, therefore you need the reed dimensions (which you can’t tell by looking) so that Reedmaker B can make a good one.
I hate it when people class their knowledge as “commercially” sensitive or whatever. It actually boils down to “You either have it or you don’t”. You can buy a lathe, you can make a reamer, doesn’t mean you can make a set of pipes that are worth playing. Etc., Etc.,
