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. Â 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, Â if the cane is reluctant to vibrate. Sometimes the diameter doesn’t suit me well, and I have to mash the opening down. Â 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. Â 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.