Doublereed Archive - Posting 000068.txt from 2003/05

From: Lee Lowry <leel@-----.net>
Subj: [DR-L] Re: Lead and wiring reeds
Date: Tue, 6 May 2003 16:06:11 -0400

I agree with Raybro. I too was in electronics for two decades, and have
been soldering electrical and other things since I was 13. And while not
all observers might agree, I have suffered no brain damage. The hazard
is overblown by the same folks who went nuts over asbestos. In college I
spent an entire summer rewiring my mom's attic, full of loose fill
asbestos, and here I still am.

For most people lead hazards are not that hard to avoid today. The
government has done a great deal to reduce casual exposure to lead in
the environment, particularly in the elimination of lead-based paints
and leaded gasoline. If you live in a part of the country where the
water runs slightly acidic and your city's water delivery system is
antiquated, you are apt to pick up some lead from the solder joints in
the plumbing or from any other lead in the system. If in doubt, have
your drinking water tested and if lead shows up, put a filter on at the
faucet. If it doesn't show up, don't worry about it. Drinking water can
be an issue because the exposure it presents is constant and routine,
and other toxic agents, such as arsenic and mercury may also be
present. A wired reed in the mouth does not present the same level of
exposure as drinking water.

I don't wire oboe reeds, but played on wired commercial oboe reeds from
7th through the 12th grade in school. (No oboe teacher available, so I
didn't learn to make reeds until college). For a student who had no
recourse to a "real" oboe teacher, I will say that the commercial reeds,
even if they didn't sound the greatest, were remarkably consistent for
response and hardness, lasted well, and the opening between the blades
was stable! Today, I probably couldn't even stand them, but it was a big
help for a student player as isolated as I was to know that the next
reed I got would be virtually indistinguishable from the last one, and
so on. With those reeds this WAS the case. So wired reeds might actually
be helpful to a lower-level student struggling with the oboe far from
double reed "civilization." Unfortunately this is the case for too many
student-players living in towns of less than 50,000 located further than
100 miles from a metropolitan area, typical of the Plains states and
mountain West. For such kids, a teacher who is an actual oboist is
usually impossible to find and the only reeds readily available are what
the local music store carries..

Bassoonists seem luckier in this regard than oboists. Most student
oboists I've heard didn't sound very good on commercial reeds, but as
long as I've been playing, I've heard folks, both students and adults,
who sounded wonderful on bassoon, who never made a reed in their lives,
nor would even consider it, and didn't buy professionally made reeds
either. To sound good, oboists have little choice but to buy reeds from
professional makers or make their own.

I do use wire (22 ga brass) on my English horn reeds. But it is far
enough down the reed it isn't in my mouth. I may or may not use wire on
my d'amore reeds, as only some of them seem to need it.

Lee .

>Date: Tue, 06 May 2003 03:36:17 -0400
>From: William R Brohinsky <onlyocelot@-----.com>
>To: doublereed-l@-----.edu
>Subject: Re: [DR-L] New subject - Wires on oboe reeds
>Reply-To: doublereed-l@-----.edu
>
>In general, solder is something that is better not visited on a regular
>basis. However, the whole subject of lead safety and solder is far
>overblown by the industrial health and safety folk, leading to a
>situation where it is difficult to impossible to know just what is and
>isn't true about it.
>
>I've been in the electronics industry for over 30 years, and have been
>wielding a soldering iron for most of that time. I have no sign
>whatsoever of lead poisoning. I've handled lead, melted it, inhaled the
>flux fumes, etc.
>