Yes, I can make a reed in five minutes. And I can play it. But this is not my ideal way to work – the cane needs time to settle between soakings, and I find that my stability and longevity improve dramatically when I take MORE time rather than less to get to my finished product. What I actually tend to do is work batches of cane – from pre-gouged to blank, to rough-scraped, to finished, and to polished – over the course of several days.
In an email, Beth asked: I’d like to hear your ideas about quality control during each step of the process, from cane selection to final scraping. What would cause you to discard a piece of cane, or a blank, or scraped reed?
Her question seemed to go along beautifully with this video, already in the planning stages, so I’ve covered quality control along with my Four-Day, Under-Five-Minutes-A-Day, step-by-step Batch Processing video.
These Five Minute Reedmaker lessons post once a week on Youtube. You can subscribe to me there, or keep watching this space for updates. Soon I’ll figure out a way to mount them on my own website as well. I’d love to hear what else I can help you with, and what my next short video should address – let me know!