That has been my understanding and experience.
Yes, annealing softens the copper enough to bend (with your fingers if you have a pretty good grip!) into shape. Manipulating the copper (flexing, beating with hammer around staple) hardens it again.
If you know a roofer that has copper flashing, it is 0.020" thick. Get him to cut a 2-1/8" to 2-1/2" strip off for you, depending upon your measurments needed.
Dirk,
You might check with John on that - this is his gig.
Hello brian,just got back from the new years celebrations up north, been on the ale for three days,Lovely, 
I think tubing should work for you, what width are you making your reeds when finished?12.80mm,try a slightly wider reed head 13.20mm=0.520inch, try a ID staple eye height of /1.60mm=0.063inches,try an other one at 1.70mm and see what difference it makes, make sure your getting a good clean crow off the reed,but if your saying that you had a problem from first when getting the chanter,then the chanter may be at fault its self?.there are a lot of chanters that are not so hot in the upper half of the second octave Brian and it could be a problem of the chanter it self,but I would still think you can get it pretty well near decent on C# and B with a little more work on the reed,but if all fails,then try a hand rolled staple there’s nothing to loose, the reduced staple eye size will certainly help you on the second octave with what your trying to achieve, 
write everything down as you go,and you should not need to glue or stick any thing up the staple to try get it to work,can you not get a reed from the maker of your chanter?,certainly would help.
I’m gonna keep on plugging away with some new reed designs and a few different staples as well. Gonna try lengthening the entire staple a bit, lengthening the ramp, and playing around a bit with the eye opening. We’ll see what happens.
I managed to re-tie the slips from the one good reed I have a bit further down on their original staple and that helped a noticeable amount, however, I think I might still be able to fine tune things a bit more.
When you say further down the staple. Do you mean the staple is inserted further in?
Just trying to understand.
I was thinking of running a similar kind of ‘experiment’ and make up several different staples…make several slips at the same time and from the same tube of cane if possible.
Basically try to keep everything the same except the changes to the staple…then catalog the results.
For more accurate results, I would use the same head rather than different ones. Then, you know that you are only changing one thing (staple), not two at a time.
At least, the scientific method suggests that (but pipes work by magic is my belief 
).
I’m using pre-gouged slips from Seth, so as far as knowing what tube of cane they each came from it’s anybody’s guess! 
And actually, what I meant there was that I pulled the staple a little further out - like 2mm or so from the slips. This lengthened the reed and helped to tune those two wonky notes. The B is almost right on now, but the C# is still way sharp.
I won’t have the time I need to finish these for a few days, but I’ll keep plugging away as time allows.
If you needed to pull it out, try taking some small gauge steel wire and rush the eye of the staple. Fold the top into several small folds in the area you would guess C# would lie.
This can flatten notes adjacent to that note, so make sure you need stuff in the thumb hole (so you can remove some to flatten). This can also affect the 5th notes and has some effectss in the lower octave as well IIRC, so make sure to check them against the drones.
Dare I stick my nose into this?
Of course, you have more control with a hand rolled staple, the question is whether it’s necessary. The internal dimension at various points along the staple bore are what is at issue. This can be controled by how much and where you flatten the tubing. It is simply much easier to use tubing and facilitates more consistent results. For me, easier is better as long as the result is not compromised. I am aware of no compromise, having regular success with perfectly tuned reeds with tubing staples.
All this is to say that you might try a slower taper with a smaller eye.
I will add that, as a pipemaker, I make my chanters with a bore that is a little slower tapered than some, which leaves the bore a little larger at the upper hand flattening the second octave on those notes. Pat Sky mentions on his trubleshooting page that the second octave G is is usually sharp. I haven’t run into this although he treats it as a given and recommends forcing it in with pressure or alternate fingerings. I will also add that “perfect” on one day can shift ever so slightly on another day and may have to be adjusted for in the playing of long notes, where it will show up the most, with alternate fingerings. I make my chanters to minimize pitch shifts between alternate fingerings and there are still small differences that can be usefull for adjusting pitch as well as for tonally sculpting the notes.
good luck!
Tim Britton
From looking at your nose, Tim, I doubt that it would fit into a staple. The question should be “If I stick my nose into this, can I get it back out???” 
That is one advantage of hand rolled staples…