Author: huboboe
Date: 2013-09-10 18:32
Don - If the suppliers you bought your Pfeiffer/Mack cane from were using Freddy Pfeiffer's own tips, they were likely different from each other. The technique of the time was to make the tip using the equivalent of a key duplicating machine. The tip blank was placed in a movable carriage and stroked across a grinding pin until the template stopped the process. The problem was, as the grinding process heated up the blank the metal expanded. As it cooled it would contract again.
The heating was uneven from tip to tip, so the finished tips were different from each other, sometimes by quite a bit.
When I first started making shaper tips, I measured my tips, my friends' tips, their friends' tips, and for each 'flavor' I put the numbers into a spreadsheet, discarded the extremes and averaged the middle numbers. Those are the numbers I manufacture from, so they are the statistical equivalent of the middle of the bell curve for each group.
I measured 13 Pfeiffer/Macks, 12 Brannen Xs and a slew of other tips, but my sample sizes were large enough for the 'flagship' tips that I'm confident of the results.
I agree that it's a good idea to shape your own cane. Consistency is the heart of good reed making, and lets you more clearly see what the changes you make and can control do to the result, as opposed to unknown changes made by a third party.
Robert Hubbard
WestwindDoubleReed.com
1-888-579-6020
bob@westwinddoublereed.com
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