Author: jeremyreeds
Date: 2010-11-22 23:16
Hello Jhoyla (Jeremy), regarding your statement "The reason for a metal reed-well are obvious - the wear and tear caused by continual insertion and removal of reeds would render the instrument unusable in a few years", I do not quite agree with such reasoning. In the 1800's, I believe oboes did not have a metal reed-well; as a matter of fact, I have an English Horn (cor anglais) ca.1890's, which has only a decorative metal ring around the bocal-well, and I still play it; the modern English Horns all have metal bocal-wells (suckets), similar to the modern oboe's reed-well.
I think that one would have to spend a lifetime, and probably part of another, inserting and removing a greased corked staple, in and out of the (wooden) reed-well of an oboe, in order to reduce its diameter by 0.1 mm. ; but that is not really important, probably if I was an oboe maker, who needs to pay his rent, would realize that one must CAPITALIZE ($$$) on legends, cliches, superstitions, etc., and I instead should offer oboes with reed-well in platinum, gold, sterling silver or our regular most popular german silver (nickel silver); I would follow by giving my customers the speech that flute players get, regarding the qualities of sound that each of these metals delivers.
I do not mean any offence, I just wanted to share some humor.
I do agree, instead, with "The area most prone to cracking is the area of the trill-keys and LH 1st finger. In this region of the instrument the tone-holes and posts are packed tight together, the wood is relatively thick (compared to the bore) and this combination - when subjected to extremes or sudden changes of temperature - is more likely to cause cracking than any other". It is only natural that the crack follows the path of least resistance - the path of the grain of the wood which is naturally the weakest or has been made the weakest during the manufacturing process (like drilling holes along the path of the wood grain). In other words, we can, with a high degree of certainty, predict where the crack is going to happen, before it happens. I imagine it this way: if we have a chain and we pull on it from both ends, we know that it is going to break at the weakest link, we do not know before hand which one it is. If we drill a hole or two in one of these links, we know for sure where it is going to break, except if there was a link which was 'naturally' weaker than the one on which we drilled the holes. Now, the important thing here is to realize that the break would not necessarily happen at the ends of the chain where it is being pulled from. In the top joint of an oboe, given the worst conditions (like in the middle east), very dry (wood wants to shrink), and very hot (metal wants to expand), the wood is under stress where that piece of metal and wood meet, but the crack will not necessarily happen there, just like in the chain, the breaking does not necessarily happen at the point where the chain is being pulled from.
Humidifier? I have never used it but I think it is a good idea, at least one of those variables (humidity/temperature) is kept constant as long as possible.
Regards
Jeremias
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