 The Oboe BBoard
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Author: huboboe
Date: 2012-07-14 20:49
Very pretty knifework! You have clearly learned to sharpen your knife, and you are obviously scraping where you intend to scrape. Those are probably the hardest things to achieve; now you can play with the architecture until you find what works best for you.
The blend in both reeds in pic 4401 is nicely sloped. I would suggest you will get a more responsive and freer blowing reed if, at the point where the blend meets the edge of the reed, you take a tiny bit out of the corners, thereby defining more of a crescent rather than a square across profile. The extreme of that would be a v-shaped blend, but where you end up in that spectrum depends on too many other things to make a firm rule, and I'm speaking just from observation since I don't have the reed to play on...
I think you should also leave the corners of the tip alone unless the reed is well balanced but too bright and you don't want to clip the tip across. Thin corners promote agile response.
On light, both when scraping and when taking pics: Think for a minute about early morning and late afternoon sunlight on a landscape. The strong, raking light brings out surface texture and detail that the direct sun at noon obliterates.
A small, high intensity halogen desk lamp is ideal for reed making. If you hold your reed with the tip pointed to the light, the raking light will bring out certain details. Hold it with the staple pointed toward the light and you will see a whole different set of details. And hold it cross-ways and see how the spine jumps into relief. The flatter you get the light across the surface, the better this works.
Use this technique to see where the unintended lumps, bumps and nicks are.
It's also important to change as few things at a time as possible. Staples, for instance. In pic 2711 you have 2 Chudnow staples and 2 others. The Chudnow staples are more rounded and have a larger opening on top. When you have finished all four reeds, are the differences because of the way the reed is cut or because of the staple?
I tell my students to eliminate as many variables as possible. Find a cane source you like the feel of and get as much of the same cane, shaped on the same shaper as you can afford. Find a dozen staples that fit your mandrel perfectly (or at least all the same way) and use only those. That way the differences between reeds will most likely be a result of your architecture, rather than differences between materials.
You've got a great start. Keep chopping!
A reed a day keeps the... Oh, wait! That's an apple a day...
Robert Hubbard
WestwindDoubleReed.com
1-888-579-6020
bob@westwinddoublereed.com
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ptarmiganfeather |
2012-07-10 23:34 |
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mjfoboe |
2012-07-11 02:22 |
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oboe1 |
2012-10-12 19:43 |
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Wes |
2012-07-11 02:35 |
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ptarmiganfeather |
2012-07-11 07:23 |
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RobinDesHautbois |
2012-07-12 01:50 |
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ptarmiganfeather |
2012-07-12 05:06 |
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RobinDesHautbois |
2012-07-12 10:38 |
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ptarmiganfeather |
2012-07-12 18:31 |
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mjfoboe |
2012-07-12 20:05 |
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RobinDesHautbois |
2012-07-13 01:14 |
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mjfoboe |
2012-07-13 01:21 |
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Loree BF51 |
2012-07-14 17:49 |
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huboboe |
2012-07-14 20:49 |
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ptarmiganfeather |
2012-07-15 00:13 |
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WoodwindOz |
2012-10-13 15:19 |
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GoodWinds |
2012-10-13 18:16 |
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ptarmiganfeather |
2012-10-14 23:47 |
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The Clarinet Pages
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