Learn to make double reeds

I finished my second reed today that actually plays in the chanter. Other than the bottom D and the low G, all the other notes seem to be reasonably in tune. Encouragingly my back D is nice and solid even at high pressure and my high E doesn’t warble like my other reeds.

Unfortunately, my bottom D is about 60 cents flat and my low G is also about 5-15 cents flat. After speaking with Reed Doctor Daryl I am going to attempt to bring the bridle back and lengthen the scrape a bit. I can see that the bottom of the scrape is very thick still and the transition to the middle looks like a bit of a hack job.

Still, not bad for a second reed. I also have managed to more or less get the hang of the wire bridle. I replaced the stupid twist-tie on my first reed with a proper wire and that perked it up immediately.

Both reeds are hard to play and require much more pressure than is comfortable. I’ll try to get the lips thinner next time and hopefully that will help.

I finally got not only a sounding reed but one that plays reasonably well in my chanter. I get most of the bottom octave bang-on (the F is a little off), my back D gurgles like a newborn and I can get a little ways up into the second octave. I need to replace the bridle (a crummy hack I made out of a twist-tie) with a proper copper strip which may help a bit to clean up the bottom octave and help me into the second. I seem to recall Daryl saying that the gurgling back D comes from air escaping so I’ll have to go back over the sides of the reed and make sure that they’re nice and airtight.

I think the major problem I was having before was not bringing the scrape far enough down the blades as well as not making the back of it (farthest from the lips) thin enough. While making the scrape I did a lot of comparing this one to one of the pair Neil sent with my pipes. Holding the two reeds up to the light was a great help in getting the thickness of the blades correct on mine.

Now I can move on to making reeds that sound bad as opposed to reeds that don’t sound at all!

My reeds are getting better and better but they still don’t sound.

The method I like best so far is Benedict Koehler’s: he relies on the feel of the cane, it’s thickness and the amount of give when you bend it, to gauge whether or not to keep thinning the slip. Also, because he cuts the slip down to the approximate thickness with a knife, you only have to gouge a small amount of cane in order to get nice thin lips on the reed. This being said, I think that my problems lie mostly in the overall thickness of the slip: I’m having trouble getting the right amount of spring in the slip. Too much and the slip is all “bendy” and tends to crack when I gouge it; too little and the reed is stiff and I need a super-deep scrape to get the lips to actually come together. It’s also hard to gauge what amount of “spring” is correct in the reed. I have a feeling that once I’ve go the slip thickness problem corrected I’ll run into trouble with my staples… that’ll be a nice problem to have.

I’m also having a bit of trouble with the bindings since I don’t really have thread that is of an appropriate thickness. I have hemp twine that is about 125% of what I need and I have sewing thread which is about 40%-50% of what I need. I’m going to try using oboe/bassoon reed thread of standard (FF) thickness.

I recently purchased “The Heart of the Instrument” a reedmaking masterclass DVD produced by Na Píobairí Uilleann which has classes by Cillian Ó Briain, Andreas Rogge, Benedict Koehler and Geoff Wooff. Although a bit pricey (round about €60) it is well worth the price as the wealth of information provided would be surpassed only by a live one-on-one encounter with these master reedmakers.