I made about ten reeds, from some hard cane tube.I have box full of stock I got from Medir about a year ago.
I selected some tubes with yellowish color and shiny sufface with no brown spots. They were hard to gouge and sand and had to do a lot of scrape,widen the V to a very wide U,to make a clow and make it playable. And what is bad that I could not cure the flat second 8ve and the flat back D.
Now after used all the slips I made( I could’t make a working reed at all!) ,next I selected a whiter colored tubes,seems to be softer from the thumb nail test,and have some brown colored dots and spots all around the suraface.
They were easy to gouge and started to sound while the lips were thick and there was no flat second 8ve!! I’ve done three reeds and all worked nicely.
I take care not to change the demension of the reed itself. They have 12.7mm width head ,using a 70mm sanding block,insert 20mm of the 50mm staple made from 5mm brass tube. Oh I’ve been making reeds for about a year and these are not my first attempt.
Is there a general rule that a harder cane tends to create a flatter second 8ve?
As a rule, hard cane ought to be gouged/sanded to a thinner thickness than softer cane before cutting and tying the reed. But the fellow(s) to ask about this are Alan Burton and Pat Sky… who has been at it for some 30+ years.
PS, your English is fine, it’s my ability to understand English that is really in question.
I am not claiming any expertise here but I had heard the opposite:
Leave harder cane thicker, then you go down to softer wood when you scrape.
Maybe others could clarify?
Nice looking reed, but should the bridle be a bit further up the head? (Looks like it only just clears the staple). Or is that not important if the reed work?
Mr.AlanB helped me a lot. I asked him a lot of questions and he always gave me a great advices. Today I basically follow the methods he kindly shared. Last time he sent me a pre-made samples (finished slip ,staple etc)of his reeds and I could learn a a lot including how to create a tone chamber.
I learnd from Mr.A.Faden that the bridle should stay just above the end of the binding,because the lower the bridle stays the more the lips will vibrate freely.My favorite reed made by Mr.Buton also has the bridle just above the binding.I will move the bridle towards the lip if the back D is flat ,but for this one it seems to be OK with this position.
I agree with David. Cane has its sap running in little bundles throughout the wood, unlike most plants which have it running just under the bark. These fibrovascular bundles are more concentrated just inside the skin. Softer cane has less concentrated bundles and less overall. By gouging thicker, say 1.3 mm or so at center, it will expose an area of less concetrated bundles in the scrape. Softer cane can be gouged to 1.0 mm thickness at center. The skin, or bark is not as hard as the area just under it.
