After several messages sent and received from Parker and his prompting..... here goes.
A few years ago I wanted to make a few duck calls for myself, friends and family. Something to play around with and kill some birds in the process. All I needed was the right dimensions and a little time, right? So I started reading and taking notes from the forum for 9 months. Into the shop I went with this newfound knowledge in hope of walking out a few hours later with a good sounding call. Sorry, no Disney ending. In short I spent the next several months taking notes of what worked and what did not. I am over two years into duck call making and am finally finding a sound and design that I like. I can only hope I'm not done striving to improve. I believe they call that "being bit by the bug".
Fast forward. I decided that a goose flute for the pit would be a great addition... maybe a grunt tube, a short reed, a tube call, a squirrel call, a turkey pot call, etc. You get the idea. So back to the forum and notebook. I spent most of this spring and summer reading through the different tutorials and forums writing down tidbits of info from other call makers. The results of this were a grunt tube and goose flute. This was getting fun!
On to the short reed. During the last month I read through every post of every thread from all 29 pages of the goose section while taking notes. Twice in case I missed something. I didn't keep track, but I'm pretty sure it took me about twenty or thirty hours to do so. Why? I can tell you that the time spent reading through it all gave me a better sense of how a call operates, the history and the characteristics of a short reed. I haven't fired up the lathe yet, but I can tell you what the barrel/insert lengths, bore dimensions, gutsert design and gut choice is already. It wasn't fast or easy, but I would have felt robbed if someone had just opened up their notebook for me to see.
If you read through the goose section you will find that there are around a dozen of the same questions about call length, another dozen about bore dimensions and probably a half dozen concerning gutserts and gut choice. I take my hat off to the more experienced call makers on here that graciously answer these questions. If you notice that their answer seems vague, I believe they already know what I learned..... a quick answer will only cheat you out of the joy of researching, learning and trying. Thank you to all who challenge us!
....... and now back to the notebook.