Reed Gouging Machine

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Ceann Cromtha
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Reed Gouging Machine

Post by Ceann Cromtha »

Some of you may remember this thread from the past (among several) about commissioning a company to make a devise dedicated to gouge uilleann pipe chanter reeds:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=89274&sid=29118829e ... a3a12f877e

In any event, I don’t think that anything ever came of it.

For that reason, I’m starting a new thread on the gouger featured on this page:

https://www.mdreedproducts.com/products.html

The earlier discussion revealed that a major impediment to acquiring or commissioning such a machine was the cost — on average $1500+ USD. Since the cost of this gouger is one third of that, I figured it was worth revisiting this topic.

You’ll note that the maker states that “special modifications and requests are available.” What I’d like to know from the expert reed makers out there is what would the parameters be for an ideal gouging of an uilleann pipe reed (following the model of, say, Cillian O’Briain’s standard D reed, since that seems to be the model that NPU uses)? If I got the figures on this, I’d be more than happy to be the “guinea pig” on this “project.”

I’ll add that years ago I purchased the profiling machine (the first item on that webpage) and it works quite well making the initial scrape on the reed (something that I’ve always found quite challenging to do). The fellow who runs this company was very easy and pleasant to deal with and his machine is not only of extremely high quality, you can tell from the way he made it that he has a very high level of engineering skill.
iain beag
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Tell us something.: I play various instruments, Highland pipes, Border pipes, uilleann pipes, smallpipes, flute (badly) and trying to learn mandolin.
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Re: Reed Gouging Machine

Post by iain beag »

Hi
Talk to Arnold about what you want, he is very knowledgeable.

You're requirements are based on diameter of cane and cane used.

Iain
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