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Re: reed making question

Author: jhoyla
Date: 2011-04-06 08:19

Here are some practical tips regarding knife technique.

1. Sharpen your knife
2. Check it is sharp, and if not, go back to 1.
3. Repeat stages 1 and 2 several times for every reed (yes!!!!)

4. Long strokes
I use the terms "reed thumb" (usually left thumb) and "knife hand", usually your right.
These are accomplished by maintaining a fixed angle of attack with your knife hand, and pushing the blade forward (NOT downward!) with your reed thumb. It should be possible to do Craig's scrape from the back to the tip in one stroke, using this method.

5. Short strokes
These are useful for "dusting" (very light strokes that remove almost no cane), and for fine detail such as the "blend" area. For these strokes, position the blade carefully using the tip of your reed thumb against the back side of the knife, hold the reed thumb still and rotate the wrist of your knife hand. Strokes like this should be very light and should never be more than 1-2 mm in length, since the angle of attack changes and you could dig into the cane (could this be your problem?)

6. Scraping the blend
[An aircraft can rotate in three different dimensions. "Pitch" is angling the aircraft nose up or down. "Roll" rotates the aircraft about the axis from tail to nose, and "Yaw" rotates the aircraft left or right about the vertical axis without change in the horizontal plane.]
The important detail here is to angle the reed in all three dimensions, so that you are doing short strokes in the right direction. You cannot scrape a smooth downward slope on the blend by scraping horizontally - you have to pitch up, yaw to the correct angle of your "V" shape and roll slightly so that you are scraping in the correct direction. Much of this is achieved with the hand holding the reed. Your strokes should be so short here that they begin and end in the blend area.

7. Plaques
I use two plaques - a steel, flat plaque for scraping the tip and the extreme edges, and a contoured (bellied) black plastic plaque for scraping the blend, heart and back. I try never to scrape the edges and tip on the contoured plaque, because it digs channels.

8. Removing nicks
You can't remove nicks by attacking them head on. You have to work gently at a yaw angle of at least 20-25 degrees to smooth them out.

9. Balance
What is a balanced reed? It is a reed where all four quadrants match each other, directing the vibrations down the centre line. This does not happen overnight - it takes LOTS of practice.

Hope this helps,
J.

Post Edited (2011-04-06 08:30)

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