Making The Staple, Mandrill and Forming tool.
To make your staple mandrel, take a 150mm length of 4mm silver steel rod for concert reeds and 3mm rod for flat reeds, mark off 1" from the end and file a taper into the rod from there onto the end, so you are left with 2mm at the point.
Now file the end so you are left with a nice oval shape, this is your mandrel made, see picture top right/left.
Staple blank theory for making a rolled staple
To work out any size of blank you may need to roll with, all you have to do is add the diameter of the mandrel you are going to roll around to the thickness of the blank/strip you are going to use, then multiply this figure by 3.14 and you will have the exact size or width of strip needed to roll around your staple mandrel.
Stamping out the staple
The stamping tool, is a piece of flat plate 60 X 100 X 4mm steel plate with a half rounded section along the 100mm edge, see picture below, place it over the centre of the groove in your stamping block, in this case its a 5.00mm groove and with the forming tool hammer it into the groove, see picture middle left & right.
Remove the half formed staple from the block and form the rest around the mandrel, so that both ends meet down the middle of the staple, use a small hammer to form the basic shape to the mandrel, then finish of the shaping with a set of pliers in a vice, then last file a few grooves across the tapered end of the staple, this helps to secure the head in place once tied in place, I never glue on my head, because I sometimes like to move the staple in and out of the head if a fiddly tuning problem arises.
You can also make the staple from brass tubing, but by hand rolling you can make a staple any size you like by using the theory at the to of this page.
Bottom right pictures show, the finished staple without the mandrel inserted, the inner eye measurement is between 1.8 - 2.00mm for concert reeds and 1.20 - 1.30mm for flat reeds.
Also notice that the edges of the eye are almost pointed in the corners, the edges are better to be like this because the staple will fit neatly inside the head this way, the chamber directly above the eye will be smaller so its a balance between the two, experiment at your leisure.
