Stick out your tongue and say 'ahhh'

Uilleann Pipes
1

Greetings all,

My pastorals leak like a sieve. My friend Bill has a full Rogge set that when he blows it up, the damned thing looks like a filled zeppelin. I you didn’t squeeze on that bag I am convinced you could tie a string on it, and march in the Macy’s parade with the pipes next to Snoopy. Mine however, will empty itself just by looking at it. It is playable, but takes a LOT of pumping.

I have pulled all apart, retied the blowstock, checked the bag with everything plugged. It’s good.. ok, not the bag. Tried it with just the chanter… ok.. acceptable ( not great but hey, it’s my reed). I suspect it is my composite drone reeds made of square brass/styrene tongues.

I have read here about wooden tongues on composites and it seems that a lot of folks think they are the way to go, so I am going to try my hand at them. THe one thing I have never seen is any measurement of the thickness of the tongue. Are we talking a sliver here? Has anyone a dimension handy? Thanks in advance…

Robert Mouland
www.wireharp.com

2

Start at 1mm thick and work it down. See the several books available on reed making for how to work the tongue down on drone reeds.

djm

3

Here’s a very good online tutor.

http://bagpipeworks.co.uk/making_reeds.htm

4

I use round brass tubing and spruce for the tongue.

Benedict Koehler recommended aligning the grain perpendicular to the lay and the tongue “finished the round” of the tubing, so it tapers from almost nothing to 1/3 the diameter of the tube.

I got the length measurements from Tim Britton’s “My Method” and I filed away 1/3 of the diamater for 3/4 of the length of the tube for the lay as described in D. M. Quinn’s “The Piper’s Despair”.

They are very stable and air tight and take very little air.

Round tubing fits much better in my drone reed seats than would square.