Author: vboboe
Date: 2007-08-19 21:56
<< thanks for the suggestion to thin ** the sides of the heart **>>
well, this weekend's reed worked best with the heart section of spine debarked and the heart graded significantly from midline hump out to about 60% wood thinned off towards the sides (that is, just into top layer of middle wood) -- anything thicker is too meaty for me at the moment -- finished length 71mm toning C very flattish, loosen lips a fraction tones B very sharpish (still to blow it in, it'll go sharper)
In this reed, heart rails are gone, the sides of reed are thinned in heart section, but the heart's mid-line is quite broad and graded, so there's lots of support in the middle, and the sides are still thick enough to have a little step down to extreme sides of the tip
The back rails and spine are all shiny bark left on, just graded lightly into the thinned areas of the heart
... i'm rather pleased with it, crow! crow! crow! Let's see how this one blows in
... only time and more reeds will tell if this is a consistently useful thing to do, or if it's just a transitory temporary phase of personal playing development that needs a soft heart for now, but one thing's for sure, it's much easier to design the heart in two halves graded off the midline than add two windows between rails and spine
... i'm also experimenting with thinning the tips loose enough to comfortably lip down to A (rather than the tighter and more common Bflat) but don't want to be so loose it lips readily down to G, that plays too flat in oboe
wow, time flies, it's been two years at reed-making already, this year's wastage has been horrendous, until i smartened up! and decided to ban one clunky big handled thick blade wedge knife (in official reed-knife style) from any fine detail work, it's only good enough for rough-in work from now on (taking outer bark off)
... the good news is (touch thick grenadilla wood 3 times!) haven't cracked any of last 10 pieces from tying on, only one leaked, and most importantly, haven't knife-chunked any tips -- since i started using a file to finish the tip instead :-)
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