rosspipes
Mon, 09 Apr 2007 08:41:10 -0700
Dear Richard, I was hoping you would come into the discussion. Anita's method is certainly different in the initial stage of tying the cane on to the staple but I think the main thing to be looked at is the rubbing down and final scrape of the cane. I aim for a gradual thinning of the cane towards the tip with a side scrape to bring in the tone. With Arhie Dagg he would go for a distinct central scrape that would create a 'window' as he called it in the centre of the reed when looked at against the light. This had the effect of giving a kind of rich 'gazoo' type of tone that can be heard on Joe Hutton's pipes. I have aimed for the clearer tone that Billy Pigg got from his reeds although I must say I have not studied the making of Billy's reeds so I am not sure how he acheived it. I know that Jack Armstrong scraped the sides of his reeds so there was no skin left at the sides unlike Anne Sessoms reeds which do have skin left on the sides. I hope this gives a little more insight into the arcane art of reedmaking. Colin -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: nsp@cs.dartmouth.edu Sent: Mon, 9 Apr 2007 11.48AM Subject: [NSP] reed making Julia said: 'To the best of my knowledge only Colin has written down his method. Others regard theirs as trade secrets or have simply not got round to it.' Anita has an illustrated description of her method on our website: http://www.evansweb.co.uk/pipes/reedmake/chant.htm The biggest difference between her method and Colin's is that she works with dry cane. She makes it flexible when wrapping round the staple by heating the end of the staple using a camping stove. The heat is conducted up the staple and into the cane. This works very well. Cheers Richard BTW, I have no idea how Archie Dagg made reeds, but I'd be very interested to know. -- Richard Evans To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html --