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Chinese Tube Cane - video added at bottom

Author: Oboe Craig
Date: 2011-06-10 17:58

Chinese Tube Cane - Day 4

Day 1 was splitting, planing and gouging, day 2 shaping and tying up a dozen blanks.

It hard for me not to rush it with a new source, which always is strangely exciting for me (oboe nerd stuff).

The old definition of insanity plays a role here, I admit, but I somehow always expect some magic from a new source despite 98% failure of that over the years.

In this case, in order not to deviate so much from my usual process, I made myself slow down and not shape, tie and scrape right away.

Since I usually finish a reed over three sessions over three days, that is what I am doing. My day 4 process is really day 2 of the scraping and refining.

I am pretty impressed already by 3/3 reeds seeming like they will make it to the performance case, but I will not really know until tomorrow.

Bryanwalker posted info from Katherine Needleman's blog that included positive things about the Chinese cane. I am using 10.5 - 11 though, so larger than hers, but I tend to take the cane out of the more pronounced arcs and get effectively smaller diameters that way.

I notice this cane seems a little more irregular around the tube, meaning some more smaller and larger diameters in the same tube compared to my other sources. To experiment, I am trying the larger and smaller portions. I go for a symmetrical arc on at least one 3rd of the cane when splitting, and with this seem to be getting at least 2 useful sections per tube.

What I liked immediately is how evenly the cane comes off under the knife, and was happy for that since I thought it was rather springy and resistant to the razor while shaping it.

I also really like how the tip cane scrapes off, evenly, right down to the final thinning of the tip.

I will record something and with video to demo it once I think the reeds are final.

And then, I will be interested in how they age and die... how long they play well, and what happens to tone and response over the reed-life.

I usually play and record on 15 - 20 year old cane I've stocked up along the way.

Most recent useful cane came from D. Weber 2006 and RDG 2007, which both played well for me the 1st year I had those.

Finding a new reliable (and BTW cheaper) source of cane will be a great benefit.

I guess I need to try their english cane next.

-update - the day 3 video of Chinese Cane

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiLCY6ukgrQ

Post Edited (2011-06-11 21:56)

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