The road to hell is paved with good intentioned

[d.elliott]

I have just been finishing a beautiful English treble after replacing a cracked reed and doing one or two other service tasks. The reeds are steel, and steel reeds don't usually fail unless subject to abuse, bad filing or pitting corrosion. This cracked reed, a B4, failed at the very root of the reed tongue, just beside the reed clamp. Usually reeds fail on the more heavily working area of the reed tongue belly, this failure just by the clamp in it's self, seemed odd. When I looked at the fracture site I could see a witness of a saw cut where a fine saw (jeweller's?) had been employed using the front face of the clamp as a guide cutting down into the top surface of the tongue. There were corresponding marks on the upper surface of the brass reed frame where the blade had caught it's outer edges. I then looked at the other reeds, most showed a saw witness in their reed tongues and frames in the same place. I can only assume that when this instrument was re pitched from Philharmonic to Concert pitch the enterprising individual weakened the reeds to flatten them using a fine saw to speed up the process. This shows ingenuity and a deplorable lack of knowledge about real world engineering.

 

It goes to show that not all bright ideas are all that shiny in the long run, despite the best of intentions. I expect to be replacing more reeds in time to come. Happy days 🤷‍♂️

[Duncan Luddite]

Ouch!

I have books on traditional archery bow making, and one of the *big* things they point out, when shaping the limbs of the bow, is to have *no* sudden changes/sharp angles in shape/strength in something that bends. The tapers must be graduations from one state to the next. I see this in effect in so many engineering structures where load or deflection are being dealt with; bridge supports (including the Victorian riveted iron bridges with curves connecting disparate angles), street/sports ground lamp posts that taper evenly along their entire length, etc. I've taken to calling it 'Bow Tech'. And, yes, this applies especially to reeds that are vibrating 100's or 1,000's of times per second.
 Hopefully the other reeds don't fail in too quick succession.

All the Best.
And, thanks for your excellent book