I’m finishing off a reed. It’s a backup. Tunes nicely. BChildress’ instructions for reed making include this nail polish stuff. What do the rest of you finish off your reeds with? That is, what sort of gunk do you smear all over it for various effects like making it long-lasting or impervious to changes in humidity?
Do any of you treat the inside of the reed? Outside?
Also, I’d really be grateful for advice on fixing a flat high A… I’m always fighting this flat high A!!! Drives me nuts and every reed I make (and BChildress’ reeds as well) have a terribly flat high A …
I don’t treat the reed with anything. I have rubbed a little candle wax on the inside of the slip (per Cillian O’Briain’s instruction), but lately I haven’t bothered. I figure, when it dies I’ll make another or select one of the many I have already made.
As for the flat second octave A, if one of BC’s reeds has the same problem, I would tend to fault the chanter. Do you know anybody nearby who could check this oput for you?
re: flat high A - I can usually conquer it eventually with some method or another, so I am sure the fault is mine. The reed I’m using now I made and the high A is not too flat most of the time - I have a wire rush and the bridle is up pretty high on the reed. A=449, though, which drives my fiddle-playing wife bonkers because she wants a nice 440 A.
I stuck the staple a bit higher up in the reed than usual this time . I’m still making the scrape much longer than I have to, which makes, I think, for a weak reed. My back Ds are often weak, needing a real significant let-off of pressure to play well. I snip a little off the top to help this.
Yep… today a reed that eventually got cracked had a, autocran D… never had that before… It’s quite a task, really: I don;t kow of anything else I can work for so long at with one false move at any time making the whole this irreversibly ruined! I do a lot of programming … shame we can’t create Edit|Undo for reed errors! maybe after some time I will get better at it. Right now, I get one good reed out of every 4 or 5.
In time, and after you have made a gazillion of the things, your success ratio will get better… but my advice would be to make it a point to try and make one reed (or more) a day, experimenting with design and such. After a while, you probably will be measuring more by eyeball than with calipers, rulers and dial thickness guages.
What do I finish my reds off with? I nice piece of Danish Blue cheese and some spiced kalamata olives. Goes down well…oh…REEDS you said?
In that case, nothing. I tend to make reeds in different weather types, so I have a summer reed for hot, humid weather and winter reeds for cooler, dryer weather.
Ahh, the flat octave A… there’s a blast from my past.
I used to overly scrape reeds, making for extremely flat back D’s and octave A’s. I expect, if it’s not the fault of the chanter, that you’ve scraped the reed too much and lessened the internal volume to the point where it is affecting the upper hand of the second octave. You could trim the reed shorter, but this usually introduces or worsens the autocran on the bottom D. I understand that a longer flattened section on the staple will flatten G and A in the second octave so a different staple might also help (I switched from staples with very thin 0.6mm walls to Brian Howard’s thicker 1mm walled tubing and found that this helped with flat second octaves). My suggested next step would be to try fattening up the top of your staple with PTFE (plumbers) tape or experimenting with tone chambers to see if increasing the internal volume of your reeds helps - if it does, buy/make some thicker walled staples.
Oh, on the finishing of reed subject, like the others, I use nothing. You could do the neatsfoot oil thing if you like, but I can’t comment on how worthwhile this is as I’ve never tried it. However, I’m a real endorser for dipping the tails of a slip in water prior to binding the reed (this was the most valuable change I made to my reed making)
Great ideas, thanks - even got some recipes out of this post!
I was wondering if anyone made reeds for each season. It gets very dry here in winter and I often heat woth wood, so I guess my summer reeds will have to go on vacation…
Dipping tails in water? just dip or soak them a bit? What effect does this have? I’m guessing maybe it permits the cane to warp / wrap around the staple better.
Since all of my reeds have the same flat A and weak D trouble, I figured it was something in the design that was causing it.
Soak the tails for a few seconds, then shake off the excess water. This practice will greatly reduce the probability that the reed will crack while tying it on the staple. It will also allow the reed to take on the shape of the staple easier. You will want to let this type of reed sit for at least 24 hours in order for it to dry prior to scraping.
Me too! Although not to finish the reed - it’s applied after gouging and sanding the slip but before the tails are cut. When everything is finished, I rub a little bees wax along the sides of the reed to help make it air-tight.
I should qualify this by saying that so far, I’ve only made one reed from scratch. However, I’ve untied several reeds (3 or 4) and given the slips the Neat’s treatment. They all play well and when humidity climbs over 60% they are less affected than non-treated reeds.
Edit:
Forgot to mention that when I soak the slips, I tie them with dental floss to a 1 5/8" pvc pipe (which also serves as a sanding block) and let them dry.
