resoldering a broken pyramid with a heatgun?

[e23]

Hey guys,

I didn't want to start messing with reeds in the beginning. But I had a reed that sounded broken (or "rattly" I guess) when I played it a little harder. First I thought it was positioned wrong, but it was actually the "pyramid" (or rather the spiky and edgy blob what was supposed to be a pyramid) which came loose on one side and was "rattling" I guess.

I felt adventurous, so I tried the following:
- clamped the reed into a helping hand, solder facing down and the reed at a slight decline towards the solder.
- put flux on the tip.
- used a soldering heatgun to melt the solder into a clean half drop shape.
- cleaned the flux.
- put it back into the piano.

Weirdly, the reed was now exactly one semitone lower, which seems impossible since I did not add any mass. I assume it's because all the solder now had proper contact to the reed and that somehow made a difference?

But the takeaway here is, that my method actually worked quite nicely. So, I filed the half-drop a few times until I had it tuned back to the right note. And here I am. Fixed my first reed It's not a pyramid, more in between a half-drop and a pyramid, but it looks better than before and sounds right to me.

Now, tell me all the reasons why I should not have used this method     

Cheers
 

[pianotuner steveo]

Simple- if the Reed blob is loose and rattles, a drop of super glue in the crack usually solves the problem.