Small or large staple eye?

Uilleann Pipes
1

A fellow piper let me borrow his “Heart of the Instrument” DVD (reedmaking masterclass) yesterday to see if there were any tips I could get from it after years of reedmaking from information I’ve found on the internet. I watched it last night and was rather horrified by the internal size of the staple eyes. They were 1.2 - 1.4mm between makers, which is the smaller than anything I’ve seen on the internet. I’ve seen through internet resources that the eye should be between 1.5 and 2mm (one resource being adamant that it MUST be 2mm). I’ve gone for about 1.6mm for a while and just made a blank with a 2mm eye following advice from a C&F forum member that this may help sharpen the back D note. These guys on the DVD are respected reed makers and I figure that both their methods and specifications should be emulated if we are to make good reeds. So I am left with the question “why is the norm larger than this?”

Does anyone have any comments on this through their experimentation with staple eye openings?

Through a C&F search, I can see that others have asked questions regarding staple eye opening, but responses have usually stated that the staple taper should be the focus rather than the eye. However, I don’t think that enlarging or decreasing the eye by a miniscule few tenths of a millimeter would really change the overall taper of the staple and whould only have an affect the internal volume of the reed by the few tenths of a millimeter that the eye is altered by. Can anyone address the specifics of EYE OPENING SIZE and how it affects the tuning/performance of the reed? - I can, of course, get answers by experimenting myself, but I like the instant gratification that can be obtained through posing questions to those who have done it all before and are willing to impart their knowledge.

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This may or may not be of help, but length of staple/slip may affect the size of the eye.

David Quinn use a staple of 54mm or so for concert pitched reeds, while I rarely go above 52mm. But then, my usual staple eye is roughly 2mm or so, and my taper length is roughly 23mm for a bunch of different chanter makes. And here we hit on the heart of the matter, no two chanters (even same pitched chanters by the same maker) are exactly alike and thus their reeds must also be slightly different in dimension.

There is, in my mind, no universal chanter reed with specifically hard dimensions, each reed must meet the demands of the chanter it is made for. The only way to really do this is to make a ton of reeds for a ton of different chanters and keep detailed notes on each one for future reference… something I usually do, but not always… I have massive brain farts from time to time. :smiley:

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Goldy,

As Joe says above ///\

Not only is the reedmaking about measurements, it is also, as Benedict Koehler oft says on the DVD, it’s about the ‘feel’.
I know it all sounds a bit ‘floaty’, but the craft is all about compensating, and with all the variables it’s impossible to tie it down to an immovable set of measurements.

After reading your post, I went to a reed I was making. It was tied on and had the scrape cut and mostly sanded. I took it apart. The eye measured 1.46mm I.D. The eye looked average for the way I make them. I then made a new staple. I left the eye at what I thought was rather oversize, it measured at 1.67mm I.D.

I tied on and this alteration put a stronger arch into the blade. I don’t like this, as it means I have to cramp the reed closed a bit too much and I end up in the zone of too flat a back D. I also needed to scrape the reed a little to ease it up. Bridle was put on and it closed pretty well, but still felt a bit forced.

On playing it was in pitch and tune. Too hard, a bit screechy. The hard D was difficult to obtain and sustain. I scraped the bottom of the V to ease it, no improvement :sniffle: . A side effect was a slight croak appearing on back D when given a hefty squeeze. This is why I don’t like wide eyes, and why a remedy I use is to close down the eye to stabilise the back D.

(edit)NB: 2 hours or so later, I went back and replaced the bridle. Hard D came in a beauty. Bridle issue, not staple eye. I also narrowed the eye (not staple taper). The reed lips closed slightly (sans bridle). Back D stabilised but still crackly. Clipped reed (closing eye had flattened back D), stabilised more and got back D in tune. Reed now in pitch and tune as good as, but back D crackles a little (prob due to scraping to try and get hard D in in first instant).

I have an inkling that the absence of the hard D may be to do with the fact that I just bought a new slipstone for sharpening gouges, and I may have screwed the plane of my #4 gouge that I use to do the tail gouge and gone a little deep there, or maybe tying the head to a new staple might have changed it. I don’t know.

So, there we have it. Nothing hugely notable there. You have to make of it what you will.

The most important thing about this is, that if I had done this yesterday or tomorrow, it could very well been a different kettle of fish.

To address your request about EYE OPENING SIZE, a few things that I would do to staple eyes to correct problems are (and I would only ever close the eye of a staple, if I needed a bigger eye I would make a new staple) :-

Tricky to obtain high A & B - close the eye down.

Awkward sounding/difficult to hold 8ve E. Wider eye.

Unstable back D/Sharp back D. Close the eye (also insert staple further to help the flattening of the back D).

Sharp high A & B. Close eye, lengthen the taper (as one thing).

I have on occasion, had to almost close the eye completely to get some very heinous sticks to go.

And when you alter the staple eye, you are also altering the ‘head space’ of the reed. If you want as pure an effect by altering the staple eye only, you would have to reduce the wall thickness around the eye too (file it back perhaps), or else you can’t be sure that the eye measurement or the alteration in the reed head volume is the major influence on changes.

Stap me!! They’re a rum do them reeds.

I’m sure there was something else critical I was going to mention, ah well…

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O.K… I am pretty happy with the responses to my question. The nice list that Alan gave is exactly what I was looking for (general affects on performance/tuning created by different eye sizes) - Thanks Alan.

I’m yet to bridle and check my latest reed with the 2mm eyed 49mm staple and the wider 13mm head as I’ve been focusing on my reed that I’m trying to keep from dying (see my thread about reviving reeds).

If anyone else wants to add to this discussion thread, feel free.

Cheers