Reed-Making Tool "Gan Ainm"

Uilleann Pipes
1

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Does anyone know how to obtain the reed-making tool that looks like a rounded flat chisel (or putty knife) that Benedict Koehler uses (in addition to a cabinet scraper) to gouge cane slips in the NPU video, “The Heart of the Instrument”? In the instructional piece, he states that this tool does not have a name and is rarely used in the West (it is primarily used in the Orient).

Thanks,
Dan Humphries

2

Benedict said in a reed making workshop that a tool such as this can be made from a chisel. Grind it down to the basic shape. File it the rest of the way and then sharpen it. The exact curve doesn’t matter (I did however take a sketching of the curve from Benedict’s). Another thing that the video doesn’t show is that the tool is beveled on one side.

3

Thanks!

4

I believe Benedict made it from a piece of tool steel, ground on a grinding wheel.

5

I’ll try to make one, and if successful, I’ll post my results. Thanks for the information.

6

Is that an in-canel gouge? If so, NPU sells them. Don’t have the video, but from the description of the tool, it seems to fit.

7

I guess my description sounds such a gouge (and actually works like one to a certain extent), but it looks like a palette knife or putty knife that is sharpened. (Thanks for the recommendation all the same.) As DarthWeasel pointed out, it is beveled on one side (I watched the DVD again today and saw that), but the blade is not curled up like a gouge.

8

this one is only 1/4 inch wide and was bought at a local hobby shop, Bendicts was about a half inch wide.

9

OH-one of those thing-ees

10

Benedict’s is also much thicker than Kevin’s illustration. I suppose one could call it a sort of carving chisel.

11

I think that I remember that he took an old french curve shape as the basis to make his scraper.

It may be another reedmaker I am remembering, it has happened to me before…

12

In the back of David Quinn’s Piper’s Despair is a scraper of sorts made from tool steel. When Benedict was at our reed table during our previous tionol, he seemed to scrape more, and not using a sanding block.