In what way can your understanding of relative humidity help you keep your pipes working? or what would be the ideal %RH
Its a factor I have never really considered before ,or understood,or is it only important if you traval alot ,which I dont ?
RORY!
The basic deal is that any fool could play the pipes in Ireland, where it is always wet and proper central heat is a rarity, but it is really tough everywhere else 
It is not any one setting of relative humidity, but rather the rapid swings that do reeds in. With humidity levels between 45-46% you are laughing. If your humidity levels are around 30% it can be more difficult to get a good reed going, but not impossible - it just takes longer. But the beautiful reed you’ve had going for a length of time can die when you move it from a steady setting to something sharply different. Sometimes it can take up to 24 hours for the reed to die, but when to stops that’s it. All you can do is try to get the humidity back to what the reed is used to. Only once in a while will you get a reed that stands up to big changes in humidity (not well, but it does not completely die).
djm
Wouldn’t the time of year, place and temperature have some affect on playing characteristics and the sort of humidity that a batch of reads would like and dislike? For instance the last batch I had was made in a very dry hot summer. As soon as the humidity levels went up the read flattened and in somecases died, but as soon as the temperature dried up a bit the read started working again.
When I sent my set back for maintenance Ian made me, and tuned a batach of reads in very humid conditions. It was a hot and moist day; simmilar to what I would normaly experience in a Queensland summer. Unlike the older batch as soon as it becomes dry the reads become unstable, flat and hard to play. These seem to be complete opposits to the previous batch of reads in the set.
Thoughts? This is just something that I’ve experienced, noticed and observered when it comes to reads. Have any more experienced players/readmakers come up with simmilar findings. By no means am I a read expert.
Cheers L42B
I took my pipes 1100 kilometres north just last week (Byron Bay - immediately under the Queensland border), where I was asked by a fiddle player to do a guest performance. I was having a jam with him to come up with a set-list in a rediculously hot and humid environment on performance day. After a while of playing, the back D suddenly went flat and muffled. I panicked and thought that the glue in one of the two cracks of my reed had come unstuck, but saw that everything looked normal. However, we needed to keep working away since we were to perform that night. I figured the humidity had caused the reed to soften and close a bit so I squeezed the edges of the bridle and the reed itself to try to open it up a little and keep it playing until the end of the rehearsal. It recovered by the evening and I successfully joined in for a set of five tunes under a marquee during a heavy rain storm.
However, when I took the pipes back to my usually dry climate, the reed was really stuffed. I noticed that the lip opening had lost its symmetry due to collapsing slightly at one of the glued cracks. I fiddled a fair amount, including trimming the lips by 0.5mm, sanding, and fitting a new bridle higher up the reed. It’s got a bit more buzz now, which I think is a plus, but it has shown me that it is a bad idea to mess with a good reed to accomodate bad weather.
Cheers
Around 65-70% RH seems to be about ideal, at least for my pipes. Spring and early fall in Portland make for truly glorious piping weather…Not quite so at the moment. Due to the hot, dry air being pumped into my house by my heater, I’ve taken to sticking a small pot of water on the stove and bringing it to a simmer around the time I start practicing. Makes a noticeable difference in keeping the drones humming nicely and my joints from falling apart.