Some Notes on Reedmaking

by Bill Thomas

(This article was originally published in two sections, part one in the fall of 1995 and part two in the spring of 1996. The have been combined into one article here for your convenience.)

Some notes on reedmaking - Part One

As a pipemaker, reedmaking for me is more than a matter of just the occasional reed for my own chanter. I have to make reeds for every set of

pipes that I make, and with the sets already out there, potentially I could be asked to make reeds for every set of pipes I’ve ever made—never mind pipes made by anyone else. To be successful in these circumstances I have tried to follow a couple of rules which I consider to be the most critical aspects of reedmaking.

The first rule is: never make just one reed! Obviously if I’ve just made a batch of chanters I am going to need to make several reeds, but that is not the main reason for making more than one.

If you make one reed then you have nothing to compare it to. The cane used for reeds is a fast and irregularly growing weed. Regardless of the care you take in preparing your reed slips, no two reeds are going to perform the same, even if cut from the same tube of cane. So even if you are careful to keep all other aspects of your reedmaking method the same, it is necessary to make more than one reed just to overcome the statistical chances of using a bad piece of cane. Also, if you only make one, it becomes precious. The tendency is to try to make it work, no matter how bad. So, make two, or five. I often will make multiples of five because there are five reed blanks in a tube of cane.

The most critical step in making a reed is shaping the inside surface of the slip to a correct curve and making sure it is straight and smooth end to end. This is my second rule.

So, what is the correct curve for the inside of the reed slip? Yes...there seems to be no simple answer to this question. The ideal curve is the one that gives the following results: for any particular reed width and staple shape, when the reed head is bound on and scraped down, the blades of the reed will close down just enough to play easily and in tune, without a lot of fiddling. That is a tall order, and may take considerable experimentation to discover. The actual curve is determined by the size of your sanding block, which can vary from about 1 3/4” to 2 3/4” in diameter depending on your chanter and reedmaking style. My sanding block is 1 15/16” in diameter which seems to work well for a variety of reeds.

The actual method of sanding a reed slip uniformly has been an important area of concentration for me. As anyone who has made reeds knows, a major question is simply how to hold onto the reed slip while sanding it. The typical method which I have observed is to clamp the sanding block in a vise with sandpaper on it, and then working from the end, hold the reed slip in one hand and sand half of it at a time, reversing ends from time to time.

In my attempts to use this method, I have had a marked tendency to leave a bump in the middle where the two sundered surfaces meet, or conversely, to sand the middle thinner than the ends. There is really little to keep the two halves uniform in either direction. I knew that I would much rather keep the entire slip on the sanding block, but that brought me right back to the original question of how to hold it. Then I discovered that I could hold the slip by making my fingertips sticky.

For this I use softened beeswax. I get enough beeswax on my fingertips so that I can move the slip back and forth over the sandpaper with just light pressure. The amount of pressure is critical because the rough gouged slip is uneven and my aim is to make it straight. If I start with light pressure on a piece of 120 grit sandpaper, I can take down the unevenness to a uniform surface. I then switch to 220 and 320 grit silicon-carbide sandpaper to take out the scratch marks left by the 120 grit. This brings me to rule number three.

It is critical to sand the inside of the slip very smooth. Any scratches (even fine scratches) left in the surface will act as air channels to break the seal at the reed tip which will cause squeaking. Cane has an uneven structure with hard fibers in between relatively soft areas. Coarse sandpaper tends to gouge out the soft parts, so it is important to sand long enough, and with fine enough paper, to wear down the hard fibers level with the surrounding surface. It is worth looking at cane through a magnifying glass to see this structure. When you suck on a finished reed you should be able to pull it closed so that it will hold air for several seconds. If there is a constant leak, you didn’t sand the slip smooth enough, and the reed will squeak, the back D will break, and the reed will likely have an overall raunchy sound. I have made squeaking reeds twenty or thirty at a time.

Notice that I have not mentioned the thickness of the reed slip. Most reedmaking methods talk about the thickness of the slip as if it were a uniform measurement. A close look at any piece of cane will show that it cannot be so. I have yet to find a piece of cane that is really straight. Generally, the outside surface is bowed in length; often it is wavy, and there may well be a twist. Assuming that I gouge and sand the inside to a uniform cylindrical curve, there is almost no chance that the cane will be an even thickness end to end. That is acceptable, however, because for all intents and purposes the thickness measurement is irrelevant. If I was to carefully gouge and sand the inside of the slip to be truly parallel with the outside, it would be just as uneven.

The average thickness is a matter of some debate. Many reed makers aim for a thickness under .040”. I know of a reed made by Rowsome, however, that measures .060”. Personally , I tend to make my reeds a little on the thick side, say .050”, because that keeps the edge thick enough to prevent them from splitting off when the reed is tied up. Actually, I have found that a thicker slip generally produces a harder playing reed, one that will stand up to changes in the weather better, while a somewhat thinner slip yields a softer, more sensitive reed, but riskier.

Over the years I have come up with various ways to increase the efficiency of my reedmaking. To make the job of marking the slips easier I made a little gauge from two pieces of brass sheet soldered together at a right angle. This gauge has lines scribed on it to indicate the principal reed dimensions, i.e., 1/4’ for the slip centerline, 7/8” for the distance the staple is inserted, and 1/4” and 1 1/4” for the length of the tails. Using this gauge makes it a snap to pencil in the marks without fumbling with a ruler.

When I first started making reeds I learned to shape the tails of the slip in a fairly average way: giving them what has been described as a bottle shape. More recently

however, I have been cutting them to a straight- sided taper starting 1 1/4” from the back end. Being a cabinet maker, I use a chisel for this job. I try not to cut them to a point, but leave them about 1/16” wide at the end.

My fourth rule of reed making is that I do not cut a channel for the staple in the tails of the reed. The reason for this is first that I just do not think it is necessary, and second that it weakens the reed.

I think that the practice of cutting a staple channel started with a misconception about how the staple fits into a reed. When the staple is pushed into a reed without a channel the tails are spread slightly. Someone must have thought that this was a bad thing. I believe, however, that the opposite is true. When a reed head is bound on, the binding bends the edges of the tails in together along the edge. If the tails have been spread, the edges have further to go before they meet. This creates more tension along the edges of the reed and helps keep the arch in the cane which makes a stronger reed more resistant to closing down.

Someone once asked Benedict Koehler how far a staple should be inserted into a reed, and he replied with masterful wit that this was a subject which gentlemen do not discuss.

There are actually a couple of factors at work here, such as the rate of taper of the flattened end of the staple. Ideally when the staple is inserted the correct amount, usually 7/8”, the tails will fit the staple all along the taper. If they bear at the outer end, but not further in, that is acceptable because the binding will bring it all together. But if the ends of the tails are loose, then the staple could conceivably act as a fulcrum to lever the blades apart. This situation almost never happens if the tails are left full thickness.

Further Notes On Reed Making. Part Two

made a lot of reeds by the method I have described; holding the sanding block in one hand and sticking the slip to my other fingertips, but I still was bothered by niggling questions. I wanted to be able to use all of my fingertips to spread the pressure out uniformly along the slip, but then I could not hold the sanding block. My reed making bench is right next to my wood lathe, and I realized that it would make sense to put the sanding block between centers on the lathe.

Then the question became how to hold the paper on the block. the easiest answer, which I utilized for a long time was to tape the sand paper to the block. This was perfectly adequate, but I disliked using all that masking tape.

While thinking about the use of tape I was also pondering another one of the reed maker’s eternal questions: how to keep the reed slip parallel to the block while sanding it. Obviously, if the slip is not parallel to the block’s centerline, it will end up with a twist. Also, as one moves one’s hands from side to side while sanding, they naturally sweep through an arc which if not corrected will impart the same arc to the slip. I reasoned that a parallel guide fence would keep the slip straight, with the added bonus that it could also serve to fasten down one edge. of the sandpaper.

Now my fevered brain was really slipping into high gear. If I used two fences, I could hold both edges of the sandpaper. This raised still further issues. First, it is good to use more of the sandpaper than was just along the fence, so it would help if the fence was moveable. Second, since the fence would need to be loosened in order to change the sandpaper, it would be best to hold it on with bolts. That meant making the sanding block out of steel so that the holes could be drilled and tapped into it. It happened that I had a piece of 2 inch round stock, and I have a machinist’s lathe and a milling machine, so this was not a problem to make. It did take me the better part of a day, however, before I was done.

So now I have the most over–engineered sanding block the piping world has ever seen. It is turned out of a solid bar of steel which has a flat milled down one side to form a seat for the fixed fence. There is a shoulder turned down on both ends, and collars are fitted around the shoulders to which a moveable fence is bolted. This fence has its inside face milled to a concave curve to pinch the sandpaper tightly. The whole business mounts between centers on my lathe.

Although my sanding block may be beyond the needs or capability of most reed makers, if there is anyone out there with access to a machine shop who would like to attempt it I could be persuaded to send plans (see plans for reed sanding block on page 32). Having used this monster now for the better part of a year, I am very satisfied with the results I get from it. Obviously, there is a problem if someone uses multiple diameters of sanding blocks. I’d hate to make one of these for each size....

A recent update from Bill on the above article and thoughts about reeds in general.

I don’t know what your impression of the sanding block was from reading about it, but to follow the way I made it takes machine shop capabilities, which are probably beyond the scope of your average reed maker. The only cautions I would pass on to anyone who tries it are to be sure to file any burrs off the corners as they would scratch the reed. There is a bit of a tendency for sawdust to accumulate on the paper under the reed as you sand. This needs to be cleaned off regularly because too much can actually wear grooves into the reed.

At some point this winter I was making reeds and I had a thought which might be worth adding into the article. When someone makes a reed, they are trying to achieve two basic but separate goals. One is acoustical, and the other is structural. Obviously, these goals are interrelated, but it is worth thinking about them separately to understand them clearly—especially the structural aspect. All acoustical considerations of cane and staple dimensions, etc. aside, a reed needs to be a ridged, airtight box (except of course for the blades) in order to stand a chance of functioning properly. A large part of tying up a reed is devoted to succeeding with this goal and has less to do with the reed’s acoustical properties. How the tails are shaped, whether a channel is cut for the staple, or whether the cane is glued to the staple are all structural considerations first, although they can have secondary effects on the playing of the reed. The shape of the staple helps determine how much arch there is in the cane once it is tied up. If this structural goal is not met the reed may be too open or closed, preventing it from working properly. Once a reed’s structure is complete it can be scraped down and its acoustical properties evaluated. Of course, you can still have a bad piece of cane and the reed will fail, but the best piece of cane in the world will not work if the structure fails.

I hope this makes sense or says something useful. Reed making is one of those things which tends to turn one’s brain to mush. This has been a terrible winter for reeds. I went through a period in February when I couldn’t make a reed to save my life—an incredibly demoralizing experience that seems to happen all too frequently.