The first thing I do when I go about making reeds is to have a mental picture in my mind as to how the reed will look . I remove all distractions , especially any piping music , as that distracts me from the chanter , or drone , or regulator I am working on .
If you like a certain style of piping , or , If you want to look at a particular style of reedmaking , that helps to focus .
My best reeds are made when I have my head around it all and If I don’t , I have learned to go do somthing else for a while . There is nothing like the feeling of making your first reed that works . It used to take me all day to make a reed . Now I can do one in 1/2 an hour If I have good cane and am in the right mood .
As an aside , I dont think everyone is good at reedmaking , but there are some systems of reedmaking that are easier than others .
Begin at the beginning .
You know the one thing that I’ve noticed in most reedmaking books and tutorials is that most them do a really poor job of telling how to actually make the scrape. There’s lots of detail on the making of staples, gouging the cane, shaping the head, tying it on, but the actual scraping (the hardest and most critical part it seems) is fairly well glossed over.
Do you actually “carve” it out of the cane or Do you “scrape” the blade vertically along the reed? Do you use sandpaper? should it be V or U shaped? Should it be flat or curved? Even Dave Daye’s extensive tutorials leave me confused as to how I actually make the scrape itself.
Thanks for starting this thread, Tom, I don’t know if it’s a response to something I posted on the SF thread or just a happy coincidence.
Your opening advice is interesting, but is probably more a general word of wisdom than the sort of concrete advice most beginners are looking for. Similarly, some of the discussions on some online sites are very valuable but likely to be off-putting for beginners and of greatest interest to the accomplished maker.
I’ll come back to contribute more fully later (e.g. we need blue clickies to point people towards the various methods available on or off line), but here are some initial comments.
I learnt the basics thirty years ago from Dan O’Dowd, but gave up because I wasn’t making sufficient progress and felt it was better to spend my time practising the pipes rather than making unplayable reeds. It’s only since I moved to Belgium that climate and lack of easy access to a reedmaker have driven me to start again. I have recently tried Dave Hegarty’s method (using the Dan O’Dowd option of beginning the scrape before cutting the slip in two), and Evertjan ‘t Hart’s. From the point of view of a beginner, Dave’s seems like the better one to get started on, because Evertjan’s is very time-consuming, and there are more risks of breaking the cane after several hours’ work and having to start again.
Agreed, it is hard to teach reedmaking entirely without face contact, demonstration and correction of faults, but this thread could become a valuable resource for people who have got the basics and need to figure out how to improve their technique or get advice on problems.
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I agree about the lack of info. about the scrape. When I figure out how to post drawings I will jump in with more on that subject.
One thing I recommend is that reeds be done in batches of six or more. I usually roll staples and black wax string in one session. I wrap the waxed strings around a dowel for future use. Gouging and shaping a batch of slips is one session. My efficiency increases as I repeat each task. I gouge more than I plan on making as I usually crack one or so when tying on the heads. It helps to let reeds set after tying on the heads to allow the cane to settle prior to final scraping. It is good to remove a good amount of “meat” in the scrape either before or after tying on so the forces stabilize closer to the final reed shape.
I would like to put in a plug for David Quinns’ book, “The Pipers’ Despair”. Between it and Hegartys’ the standard techniques are pretty well covered. Each book is usefull.
Ted
[ This Message was edited by: Ted on 2003-01-28 11:38 ]
[ This Message was edited by: Ted on 2003-01-28 11:40 ]
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College courses… they often begin a class with 101 and all related subjects of the first year would be 1xx. The second year of studies would begin with 2xx.
Thanks, Tony, I knew what 101 was, but not the specifics of the year numbering system.
What I wanted to say to Tok was precisely that his first post here is worth at least a mention in Reedmaking 101, but also worth treating more fully around the 401 or 501 stage when it will mean more to the graduate classes who have a better research background 
.
I wanted to mention that Davy Stephenson has some very detailed reedmaking examples with great pictures:
http://www.bagpipeworks.com/making_reeds.htm
If I recall he gets into the scrape and the science around what areas affect which sound.
and here I thought 101 was referring to Room 101, from ‘1984’…
Mark
lol.
Seems like the focus is on doing the scrape . A reed can be made using alot of just sandpaper , but that just seems to bring the very front of the reed down , and to give a full tone , it is better to scrape the reeds with a bow razor or a similar tool . They can be scraped a bit at the end to fine tune it . Key here is to somehow antisipate the scraping part .
To do it , I leave the tails a bit open , and rely on a bit softer cane to profile out , and then finally give a finish , with a beveled scraper , to fine tune the reed . I like to have the system set to cover all problems as I make a reed . Mostly , when I run into probs, is with hard cane . I see profiling the cane slip as to allow the reed to speak right after it is tied on .
A small chop , and A short scrape , and it is done , and in tune .
chune 
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[ This Message was edited by: tok on 2003-01-28 22:20 ]
[ This Message was edited by: tok on 2003-01-28 22:41 ]