Author: jhoyla
Date: 2015-10-04 17:09
As a beginner, you should probably count your strokes as you scrape (and make sure that your knife is sharp, which is the number one mistake every beginner makes).
Scrape the same number of strokes in each quadrant, always. Count the strokes you went too deep as one stroke. Count the strokes you jittered across the surface as one stroke. It all evens out in the end.
Balance comes down to this; four quadrants, mirror images of each other. Nobody achieves this (though superstars like Cooper come awfully close) but it is the perfection we all strive for.
Remember that a reed is a three-dimensional surface, and that your blade's angle of attack should follow that contour so that it always lifts, never digs or skates. How? Two techniques: Short (< 1mm) strokes, and using your left (non-knife) hand to adjust the angle of attack in pitch, roll and yaw. Evelyn Rothwell advised moving your left elbow up, down, forward, backward etc. to achieve the ideal angle BEFORE the knife touches the cane.
As an example; you want to steepen the blend from the back of the tip to the heart. How to achieve this? If it was 30 yards long and you had a back-hoe, where would you dig :-) .
I align my knife in "yaw" with the "roof" of the blend, tip up the tip in "pitch" and "roll" so that my knife is scraping at the correct angle, and ..... tickle the blend with delicate little scrapes of less than 1/2 mm.
Hope this helps!
J.
[postscript] Okay - there is MUCH more to it than this. There are times - especially at the beginning - where you need to use long strokes. I use my left (non-knife) thumb to push the blade and keep it (mostly) at the correct angle. There is also a need to balance forward and back - the tip with the heart with the back, if you see what I mean.
Nevertheless, you should ALWAYS count your strokes, and perform the same action in each of the four quadrants. The only exception to this rule is when you are deliberately trying to even out an unevenness, either in thickness or in length.
Post Edited (2015-10-04 17:14)
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