Five Minute Reedmaker: Cane Preparation
I had a request for this next video topic:Anish wrote: Hi Jennet! :) I was wondering if you could do a video sometime on your preliminary processes with cane- you seem to get a reed vibrating beautifully very quickly from the get-go and I am curious as to what you look for when selecting cane and what you gouged to etc before you even tie the reed.Maybe I'm the wrong person to answer these questions - I am NOT fussy about cane. I did a project a long time ago for a colleague, in which I worked through multiple pieces of cane from dozens of different batches she'd purchased long ago, trying to determine which bags of cane were worth keeping and which should be discarded.What I learned is that EVERYTHING makes a reed. Sometimes I have to work a little harder, if the cane is reluctant to vibrate. Sometimes the diameter doesn't suit me well, and I have to mash the opening down. On rare occasions, it's true that the cane is too wormy or too shreddy to be scrapable - but that's a very obvious flaw, that anyone can identify, and not visible from the outside of a tube anyway. So if I get cane that can't be scraped I throw it out, but otherwise I make a reed.And that said, there are some factors that I keep in mind, that are important to me - and here is a video describing my early-stage processes and how I prepare my cane for shaping and winding.https://youtu.be/_tBwQGkeGwY