Author: ohsuzan
Date: 2007-07-17 19:27
LOL, vboboe! You definitely caught my drift about the intensity of the experience.
I think I will aim for the one-a-day schedule, to create (hopefully) good habits. I take to heart the maxim that the time to make a reed is when you DON'T need one.
Craig ties reeds by the gross (he had a hundred or more blanks with him), and then just scrapes the ready-blank or two while he's having his morning coffee. If I did that, I'd have reed shavings in the bottom of my cup, for sure.
For the past two weeks, though, I have been being a good grandma to my (step) grandson, and a good daughter to my mother, which has left only enough time for cursory contact with the reed knife. I did get a new reed knife, at Craig's suggestion -- hollow-ground on one side, bevelled on the other. I like it much, much better than the double hollow-ground one I had before. I couldn't get that one sharp. This one, I can make razor-like in its sharpness.
Let's see -- other C. M. tool secrets that I liked? A nice, big Smiths (?) diamond stone like what outdoorsmen use to keep their hunting knives sharp (currently out of stock every place I have looked, including the Internet). A ceramic sharpening stick for honing, purchased from the culinary arts department. And the Weber reed book, also currently out of stock everywhere, including the Weber site, due to a warehouse fire. Boy, do I want one of those. I hope they aren't going to be POPed.
My own contribution to the mix: I have found that wearing a snug, plastic dot double-padded handbell glove on my right hand (I'm right-handed) while wrapping really diminishes the pain and suffering of keeping the thread very tight. (I knew that keeping all that old handbell stuff would prove worthwhile someday!)
Grandson goes home tomorrow, and I get whole yawning stretches of my life back -- just in time to prepare for an English Horn/Bassoon duo scheduled for next Sunday. Never a dull moment around this household these days -- not even considering the major interior reconstruction project that has been underway on one side of our house for the past 10 weeks. One day, we had eleven (count 'em) people (not Craig, not grandson, not mother) here all day. At lunchtime, I half-expected to see a catering truck come by. Whew!
Susan
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