First question - Breaking back D

[elbowmusic]

I've been starting to make uilleann chanter reeds when I have a spare moment here and there and I've had some success. The sticking point seems to be the back D for me, at least with the D chanter. I've tried to read up on this as much as possible, but there's contradictory advice abounding. I'm guessing this is due to the breaking back D being a balancing act thing so it can be caused by a variety of factors...maybe?

What do folks do to keep that Back D strong when reeding chanters, particularly Concert Pitch D?

[brassnebony]

I usually allow a couple of extra mm in the length of my reeds to allow for back D adjustment.
Breaking back D is usually something tricky to fix but if you open the reed a hair it will strengthen the back D but might mean the rest of the notes are not optimal.
Try find a happy medium.

[benoit trémolières]

After my last experiences, the backD's stability seems to be mainly depending of the rear softness of the head.(The two Ds ar actually very correlated).
If this part of the reed is too strong, you have to scrape more longer and deeper to make the backD working.
But this can affect much the other notes, and gives limited possibilities, because as soon as the rear part of the shoulders is too weak, the backD breaks again.
The solution I recently found to fix this is to soften the head at the beginning.
That means: to find softness from the inside!
If you make a thinner slip, you can have the Ds getting out with a nice V scraping shape.
Lengthening the chest has actually the same effect.
Everything is depending of the chanters, and you have to find a balance between blades thinneness, head length, scraping shape and length, and to find a head shape that allows the reed to close correctly.

Obviously, when the backD is fixed, many thing could have to be done to tune the other notes and pitch and softness and tone of the chanter, and we've not mentioned the staple!
Just don't be afraid if nothing at all works at the first tries!
There's no results until everything is correctly balanced, yet you always have to progress in the dark for a while.

But all gets better after a thirty years!

[elbowmusic]

Thanks, Benoit! Your advice in particular makes a lot of sense to me. I will try to make it "softer from the inside".