What affects pre-scrape reed aperture the most?

Uilleann Pipes
1

I think I know that the following affect pre-scrape reed aperture and this would be my guess in a rank order of most to least affect (not including bridle affects):

  1. Sanding block diameter
  2. Staple eye height
  3. Tail gouge
  4. Staple insertion distance into reed
  5. Slip thickness prior to halving
  6. Length of staple taper
  7. Cane diameter
  8. Cane density

Am I missing anything? Is this order about right? I am asking because my reeds end up either having a very small aperture that requires the staple to open or a very large aperture that has to be forced closed or occasionally a perfect aperture… But i am not sure how i got there. I think understanding the above will help.

2

“Am I missing anything?”

The fulcrum point. should be #1 imho. compress the reed (profiel to profile, not side to side) below it and your aperture opens, compres the reed above it and the aperture closes.

in a variety of reeds i have found this point to be somewhere between the tip of the inserted staple and the start of the tail(or shoulder) contour.

I am referencing double reeds IN GENERAL here, ,experts on the particulars of the uilleann reed will certainly refine your answer below. :smiley:

3

Yeah… all those things matter, but if I may be so bold, I’m guessing you are dealing with too many elements/variables, trying to change too many things at once. You need to make “one reed” over and over, whilst changing one element at a time. Only by doing that, will you find out what is going wrong, or right. that’s the next best thing to having and expert there by your side.

4

Hi Bob,

This very subject is one that rattles around my head all the time. Probably to the point that the only time I ever post, it’s about the staples rate of taper…

Anyway, I would suggest you narrow down some of the things that you think affect the reed aperture pre-scrape. Something along the lines of:

Choose your diam., sanding block. (I work in the realms of 65-76mm, with 70mm being the workaday model for concert pitch).

Choose your cane diam.,.. by eye. That’s just an experience thing. It’s very difficult to be consistent by slavishly measuring the tube with calipers without a lot of waste, but I think a 23mm tube or a 24mm tube will pretty much yield the same results, except where a piece cut from your tube is either wide or narrow in its section (possibly ending up with parameters stretching to 22mm or 25mm, which will have pronounced differences..). Your gouge should be shallow enough to prevent you from gouging beyond your desired sanding diam.,

Then try to make your slips as similar as possible, it’s too organic to have a control model exploring the results of a bunch of differently made slips. I reckon not gouging the tails in this instant for the sake of keeping everything as uniform as possible.

The you can try this with a staple (and I recommend you do this also with a working reed). Have one staple with a steep taper and largish eye (say 1.8mm?) and one with a longer taper and narrow eye (no less than 1.2mm). Tie a reed head on and see how they differ? Insert the staple a little more, withdraw a little etc.,

When I mention trying on a finished reed, this is equally important, as the whole head alters its shape and behaviour as it gets scraped. Get your reed to the point you’d put on the bridle then remove the staple and either close the eye of the steep taper staple and open the eye of the long taper staple (without changing the taper where possible). This is all for concert pitch, you’d need to alter accordingly for flat reeds.

I reckon this is a worthy experiment without getting too bogged down. Then you can go on to the next frustrating chapter! But, I have to point out that I scrape/cut a preliminary 23mm scrape to the head before tying on, and even the extent to how far you go with that, has a big say on how you tie on.

Hope this makes helps/some kind of sense.

5

AlanB… good ideas. I was looking for the lazy approach by asking pipers who may have made a 1000 of these damn things.

Over my life I was able to get really good at flying jets, tesing rocket engines, sailing a boat, managing a team of engineers… With each of those things, after a while you learn what actions you take have large positive or negative outcomes of what you are trying to accomplish. Other things may have little to no influence on the outcome. And of course 2 or more things, together, can have their own effect. And with time you just pick it up with your failures and successes.

So I was taking an analgous approach to reedmaking… which seems on a difficultly level close to the above. Actually playing the pipes, well, is much harder than the above by the way.

I really need to practice more now, but in the future, the next time I get a few days with not much to do AND I have some more complicated tunes accomplished… I might do this grand experiment, document the results, and put them in my blog.

But the last grand experiment was to do a 3D printer model of a chanter. I got about 3/4 of the way through learning the 3D modeling software… actually had a rough soft model and then found out someone else had done it and it sounded like crap… Need to focus on playing… :wink:

6

well that settles it for me once & for all…reedmaking’s rocket science. :thumbsup: :smiley:

7

Dont forget the tying on process makes a difference. Hand tying or using a winder, imparts different pressure as does what type of thread you use.

RORY

8

Years ago, I saw Paddy Keenan pull out a reed and take it apart in a few seconds. This was for a small group of us and he explained a bit about how he made reeds - this reed looked like it was loosely tied with fuzzy pink yarn. The slips were so wide and rough looking that I wondered if he’d shaped them on his teeth somehow.

As quickly as he took the reed apart, he tied it back on to the sterling silver staple - all by hand and rather casually and then stuck in back into his chanter and played it - sounded great…it is a black art.

I call it ‘rocket surgery’…

9

Great story. I am getting more convinced that there are just so many variables in reed making that the only way to get consistent is to read all the literature, watch the NPU and youtube vidoes, attend workshops, sit down with reedmakers… And then make hundreds of them. Somewhere in there the Holy Ghost (for Catholics) or a muse takes pity on you, desends into your being and grants you the gift of understanding reeds. I, evidently, have not suffered enough frustration yet for this to occur.

10

I think it’s important not to perpetuate the idea that reed making is a ‘black art.’ It’s a skill that’s earned over lots of years and hundreds upon hundreds of reeds. The organic and occasionally unpredictable aspect of the cane is probably the worst of it as the years go by.