Wow, I’m speechless. I just got a note from Mr. Sloan, and he said my practice set should be ready by Christmas. That WILL be a nice Christmas present. I’m so excited!!!
Plus I finally got a working reed together. Mr. Vignoles was a great help to me; he went out of his way and called me a couple weeks ago to see how I was coming along. He gave me some pointers which really helped put things together in my head. He said to think of a reed as 2 reeds: scrape the lips to shape first, sand the upper half so the lips are almost paper thin, then get it to crow. After that, scrape the bottom half of the V enough to get a nice hard D. The reed was sounding pretty good the other morning when I first made it, but I got back home and found that the lack of sufficient humidity in my house closed it right up. Amazing. Put a pot on the stove to boil, and it opened right up.
Well, what can I say right now? Life is good . . .
