I sand the lips of reeds with some 220 grit sandpaper wrapped around a Starret ruler, which is simply a flat, thin metal bar. By rotating a bit it’s a snap to get that nice desirable crescent shape we all know and love. Instead of having the paper on the table in the usual manner, it’s bringing the table to the reed, in a sense. Hmm. Isin’t that a line from the Koran?
Anyway, I find it much easier to get the shape of the lips correct this way, when I can see what I’m doing.
Kevin, do you use any of the curved sanding blocks? And what about all the input on this board about scraping versus sanding? Do you not subscribe to it, and if not, why?
Thx,
djm
I sometimes wrap 100 grit around my slip chopping block, which is something like 30mm, to sand the base a bit. Usually I sand the initial cut on the table with 100 grit, after putting the bridle on (so the sides don’t seperate), then use a flat knife to get the scrape the right shape; then sand the base a bit more, and sand the lips to the correct thickness after a bit of that. After the lips are sanded down, I trim the reed, which reveals which side is still a tad too thick.
When I use to make a lot of reeds, I’d always place the reed vertically under low powered microscope so I could observe the uniformity of the blade tips. It’s so easy to get one side thinner than the other, no matter how you look at it. Scraping the reed tips is trickier than sanding in that much greater care is needed to keep from injuring the cane. Consider the different configurations of scrapers…some you push, others you pull, some are concave shaped knife blades and peel ribbons off about the size of fine sawdust (and never dig in), others are straight and have a curl (from grinding/sanding) left on the edge which works like a scraper.