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Doublereed Archive - Posting 000087.txt from 2003/09
From: PhilFrei@-----.com
Subj: [DR-L] Oboe tip-scraping woohoo
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2003 16:47:07 -0400
Hi -
I just had a little eureka moment while working on a tip of a new oboe reed.
Maybe most of you have already figured this out. But I thought others might be
interested, especially those who might sometimes get little patches of
thickness near the very tip or have problems with gulleys appearing (patches of
over-thinness) rather than an even taper out to the edge of the tip. Also, I
haven't seen it mentioned explicitly in any reed making texts.
I was thinking about how the angle of the knife seems to relate to the amount
of cane shaved on a given stroke: the most cane comes off at the point where
the knife is perpendicular (assuming a rotating-wrist stroke that rotates the
knife off of the reed rather than allowing it to chisel forward).
If one "over-tilts" the knife at the tip, so that the point of
perpendicularity would only come well off of the reed if one continued one's stroke that
far, then the cutting power of the stroke will more closely mirror the desired
gradation. I just "finished" a tip this way and was amazed at how well it worked
at the first blow.
Another nice thing about over-tilting--when the knife first comes in contact
with the cane, since it is tilted as to hardly cut at all, this makes for a
promising technique for getting rid of thick patches without creating a new
gulley in front of them.
I am also experimenting with giving the knife a little skootch with the left
thumb while in the overtilt position, to extend the length of the stroke. Of
course, it has to be very gentle, and only when the blade is tilted forward and
has little weight on it, as if you push with the left thumb when the blade
reaches perpendicular or beyond, chiseling can occur and that is very hard to
control.
The only drawbacks seem to be that it might take a few more strokes, since
one isn't using the maximum cutting potential of the knife (not an issue when
dealing with the super-thin tip), and that the tilting impairs visibility
somewhat. But there is still room to see if you hold the reed/mandrel upright
somewhere around chest level.
- Phil Freihofner
