Best Time to Cut Cane

[ausdag]

Hi all,

can any of the reed masters who have experience with harvesting Arundo Donax tell me when the best time to harvest the cane is? There are several stands of it growing near me which I want to take advantage of. Thanks in advance.

DavidG

[tansy]

when the sap is lowest. I harvest in early January, here in Alabama. I prefer standing dead though, that which died in the wilde. i guess around winters solstice would be a good time you would have an opposite time with your season difference.
tansy, (I'm not a master )

[Joseph E. Smith]

I agree with Tansy. I am also no master.

Also, as you live in sunny Oz, winter for you will be during our "summer" here in the states... adjust harvesting time accordingly.

[Ted]

I harvest only cane which has died where it grows. You should avoid cane which is too long dead by rejecting tubes with much grey mold on them. Peel away the leaves and look. Trying to cure green cane for UP reeds is a waste of time. You should also try to develop a feel for the relatve softness by pressing your thumb nail into the bark. I harvest drone cane when the sap is up in the summer. Cut it green and dry in the sun until the green has turned yellow. The sap adds springiness to drone cane.

[Patrick D'Arcy]

At midnight during a full moon on a November night. First and foremost, turn your jacket inside out... this is very important! Then, walk three times anti-clockwise around the stalk you have chosen - or has it chosen you!? No knives should be used, you will upset the wee folk! Grab the stalk between the third and forth nodes with your left hand and twist clockwise three times. If the stalk doesn't come loose select another stalk.

No other techniques should be used. You are messing with forces beyond our realms of conception.

Patrick (Lepraseání Thruckalee Howe)

[Joseph E. Smith]

At midnight during a full moon on a November night. First and foremost, turn your jacket inside out... this is very important! Then, walk three times anti-clockwise around the stalk you have chosen - or has it chosen you!? No knives should be used, you will upset the wee folk! Grab the stalk between the third and forth nodes with your left hand and twist clockwise three times. If the stalk doesn't come loose select another stalk.

No other techniques should be used. You are messing with forces beyond our realms of conception.

Patrick (Lepraseání Thruckalee Howe)

Patrick is an underestimated master of arundo harvesting.

[tansy]

At midnight during a full moon on a November night. First and foremost, turn your jacket inside out... this is very important! Then, walk three times anti-clockwise around the stalk you have chosen - or has it chosen you!? No knives should be used, you will upset the wee folk! Grab the stalk between the third and forth nodes with your left hand and twist clockwise three times. If the stalk doesn't come loose select another stalk.

No other techniques should be used. You are messing with forces beyond our realms of conception.

Patrick (Lepraseání Thruckalee Howe)

I do ask the Blond Possum Goddess for permission first, even for the standing dead, and hum a jig backwards using only a buck knife that has been warmed between a womans breasts solely for this purpose.
tansy

[ausdag]

I agree with Tansy. I am also no master.

Also, as you live in sunny Oz, winter for you will be during our "summer" here in the states... adjust harvesting time accordingly.

Yup....which means I better get around to doing it as soon as possible....
Thanks everyone for the info...interesting point about the drone cane Ted...so chanter cane in winter, drone cane in summer...

Patrick, we don't have wee folk down here, but our wetlands are inhabited by Bunyips so I'm guessing I'll have to placate them in some manner not yet known to me...

Cheers,

[amckay]

I harvest only cane which has died where it grows. You should avoid cane which is too long dead by rejecting tubes with much grey mold on them. Peel away the leaves and look. Trying to cure green cane for UP reeds is a waste of time. You should also try to develop a feel for the relatve softness by pressing your thumb nail into the bark. I harvest drone cane when the sap is up in the summer. Cut it green and dry in the sun until the green has turned yellow. The sap adds springiness to drone cane.

I've heard that a lot of people prefer cane that has died in the wild, but i'm interested to know why you think that cutting and drying fresh cane for chanters is a waste of time. Is it because the 12 months to 2 years of drying is too long to wait when you can simply find a dead piece ready to use, or does green cane make inferior reeds in comparison?

Interesting comments about the drone cane... Will have to try this one out.

[tansy]

i have cane I took standing dead that I have had for 6 years now, the biggest problem I have is finding cane large enough diameter to use.
sometimes i wonder if there is an optimal age?
reed talk is good

[Ted]

That should be... harvest dead chanter cane anytime you can and drone cane in the summer...
The usual age to harvest green cane for wet blown reeds is two years old. Cane usually dies after 3 or 4 years. I got my harvest info. from Dan Sullivan who supplied California cane to Leo Rowsome and others. I have tried cutting and curing (not drying) green cane and never got as good results as I do with dead cane. Cane dries fairly quickly. Curing takes longer. Curing is giving the sap left in the cane time to be broken down, by bacteria and viruses, to where the cane stops changing (as in hardess and flexability). Most reed makers, including oboe and bassoon, find 3 years is ample time to allow the curing process to take place. Microwaving or baking it to hurry the process usually results in harder cane. There is no substitute for time. You can make reeds from dead cane right after harvest. The reeds made may or may not change over time. Curing cane reduces these changes. Many reed makers (incl. oboe etc.) who buy bulk cane will set it aside for two or more years before making reeds as the suppliers no longer cure the cane before filling orders. I let the dead cane I harvest sit up in the rafters for at least two years ( dead cane can be counted as having most of the first year of curing already) before shipping any out. I don't think Sampson cane has any additional curing time on it. (Joseph can set me right if this is not correct.) Again, some reeds may change in playing characteristics as they cure over a couple of years, if the curing process was not long enough. I find less change in drone reed cane and usually only cure it a year or so before using. Some chanter and regulator reeds are much more sensitive to curing change. Medir says he is sending cane which has grown only one year as soft cane. This produces rather thin walled tubes. It may or may not work as well as cane which has died in the field.

[Ted]

I also find that cane from some locations to be hard, even when harvested dead and additional curing time allowed. I can harvest tons of cane locally but it is too hard for good UP reeds. Cane comes out of the ground the diameter it will be when fully grown. I used to only harvest 7/8" to 1 1/8" cane and those diameters are hard to find as well. I travel over 100 miles one way to where I have found cane which is soft enough and large enough, probably due to genetics, soil composition and weather. Anyone wanting hard cane, I will be glad to ship the local stuff for less than the price of the soft cane I supply. I am revisiting sites which I formerly passed up because there were no 1" diameter tubes in these stands. A stand of cane needs to be fairly old before part of it will produce the larger diameters. A lot of makers are now requesting from 18 to 22mm diameters. It used to be only Geoff Wooff that I sent smaller diameters. The first time I sent Geoff some was when he was still in Australia. He wanted 20 to 22mm cane. I was about to burn the lot of the smaller diameters when I got his order. I was glad to find a use for it rather than for a couple of hours of warmth in the workshop.

[unregulated]

hi all
this is how they’ve done it with spruce for violins lutes piano and guitar soundboards in the Alps for hundreds o’ years. - see links bellow
I’m awating delivery of gutar tops. air dryed for ten years with maximum hazelfitch - think 3D crushed silk effect.
Double the price o’ your “Best Quality” on production guitars, are they worth it ? I think so.
I’d pay a lot more for soundboards produced in this way if I has to, the soundboard produces the instruments voice - what does cane do in a chanter?.
Someone will need to make reads outa this material and see, oh the old stuff is best.

http://www.tonewood.ch/moonwood.html
http://www.best-eurospruce.com/4.html
yours Un.

[Ted]

The quality of the cane is the biggest variable in reed making and the reed has the largest influence on the tone of the chanter. The cane is roughly comparable to the spuce for a sounding board, but for different reasons.
The sap in cane does not run in a layer just under the bark like trees etc. It runs in fibrovascular bundles (little groups of tubes) which are distributed throughour the pith, with the largest concentration just under the bark. The soft cane has less concentration of bundles than the hard cane. As these bundles contain the sap, they are also the most dense part of the cane. Less bundles yields softer cane and a lower depth the cane will sink in the sink test. This may be an inherited trait rather than being due to nutrients or weather influences. Any botanists here have any knowlege of this? Wet reed makers describe the soft cane I and many other reed makers prefer, as being coarse and stringy and not desireable for their reeds. This is because of a higher percentage of water absorbing pith. There is such a thing as too soft of cane, but I have not found much of that. It is finding soft enough cane, which many reed makers prefer, that is my goal when checking out new stands of cane. It is fairly scarce here. If you are investigating your local cane, you may look at a lot of areas before finding suitable cane. Sampson cane has found it in So. California and others, like Joseph Smith, have found it where they lived. YMMV

[Sam L]

That should be... harvest dead chanter cane anytime you can and drone cane in the summer...

Phew, I got it right in Spain then - not through careful research but through not being able to take kids out of school for a month any other time! Pretty happy with the drone cane I got. Chanter cane a mixed bag / curate's egg / radiohead album / british summer.