I had a great time today doing the finishing on a set of C pipes in Cocobolo with Olive mounts and plain ferrules to match the ones on this customer’s other A/D set. My customer in Vermont has requested some composite reeds which I have to yet to sell in one of my sets of smallpipes. I’ve made brass/plastic composite drone reeds before and they’re pretty easy to make and steady to play. I want to do something different so I’m going to try some different materials for the body of the reed and the standard styrene for the tongue. I played the Osage pipes a lot and I’m still fussing with the drone reeds a bit. I can’t send them until I know they’re settled and when I dropped some Scotian sealer in the bag the reeds went absolutely crazy from the moisture. They’re playing okay now but I want them to be more efficient and this has led me to move the bridles around on the drone reeds. I’ve known a couple of pipe makers who started with cane drone reeds and eventually moved to composites and never went back. I’m not sure I’m ready to give up cane but I guess I can offer both if I get some good results. I love this combination of woods! The Olive smells fantastic.