Author: d-oboe
Date: 2005-08-20 13:53
Oboe9,
The most important part about the reed is the tip, and it needs to be scraped thinly, and evenly. Unless the burr on the knife is very refined, and very sharp, the knife will put holes in, or indeed rip off, the tip of the reed.
How does that relate to knife choice?
A main factor of knife choice is - unfortunately - reputation. The company should be able to explain why their knife is the best. In many commercial knives, designed for other, but similar, purposes like wood carving, the knives are made out of extremely hard steel. Perfect right? Nope. The one thing most of these knife makers don't bother to take into account (because of the sheer size of the job) is the angular carbides that are left in the steel. These are little bumps in the steel, and everytime the knife is sharpened, they fall out. This leaves the knife with a seemingly "sharp" knife. Yet, it is not sharp, it is jagged, and sawtooth. Minute bumps on a table leg are fine, because they can be sanded to perfection. A minute bump, or hole, on the tip of an oboe reed, and it's over.
I will recommend Landwell. Those knives are the only knives I've found that are able to carry a very refined burr, and that last a long time.
Their new knives are 90$ Canadian. They also sell cosmetically imperfect knives for a cheaper price (unsure of that price) and student knives for somewhere around 30$.
The student knives are excellent as you get the quality of a landwell, but for a cheaper price. The only thing is that the student knives have been ground down once, so are smaller, and won't last as long as a new knife. However, if you're just learning to sharpen, you wouldn't bother with the expensive knife anyways.
|
|
The Oboe BBoard
.jpg){kind=small}
