Reed making Guide

My Set-up:

Reeds ‘N Stuff Gouger
- 11mm bed
- 11.60 blade
Shape: Nagamatsu 1
Staples (all 47mm): Chiarugi 2, Le Roseau Chantant 1, Marigaux 1, Guercio D12
Tie length: 73.5mm on all above
Finished length: 71-71.5mm on average

My Reed Mantras:

Don’t romanticize your reeds.
- Too often, I will see a beautiful reed on Instagram and think, “wow, I love how blended they did the inception. It’s like a beach” or something similar along those lines and decide to change up my entire scraping. Figure out what works for you to be mostly consistent and stay as true to that with as little variable as possible.
Slow and Steady is always best.
- It’s always best to work consistently on reeds. I find that they tend to age better if I give them time to settle between stages. (This doesn’t mean that I haven’t cranked out a reed at 2pm for a 4pm rehearsal. They just never last till the next day…)
- Do not aim to be able to make reeds as fast as possible. Aim to make them as consistent as possible.
Always keep your knife sharp and have a variety of knives.
- Mistakes happen. Less mistakes happen when making reeds if you are vigilant about your knives. Take care in keeping the edge on your knives and find which knives work best for certain scrapes. For instance, I use a bevel knife for most things, but love a double hollow knife to get the inception a little more definition at times.
Be weary of extremes
- Sometimes the tunnel vision gets the best of us. If we only focus on one aspect, say a thin tip, the tip will certainly get thin, but it will be disproportional to the rest of the reed. Aim for a reed with good proportions and is even on both sides. A dream would be to not be able to tell which side is which because they are so identical.

Picking Cane:

I like the cane to lay flat, if possible, but a little smiley is okay if the smile is even and the cane is not warped.
A good sign is when you fold it and the cane doesn’t separate. Good cane fold cane be seen in *Figure 1 & 2*

Shaping:

I put the cane all the way down on the shaper.
I use a fresh razor blade every piece of cane
When done shaping, I slice off the ears with a backup double hollow ground knife, then sand the remaining bits of the ears off as best as possible

Tying:

Always make sure the top of the mandrel is flush with the top of the staple. Not over or below.
I tie my reeds at 73.5mm. I like to use Gutermann nylon thread Tera 40, but any thread is good.
I do find that beeswax helps with gripping and in-turn helps the cane seal slightly tighter.
Always look down the mandrel after the first few wraps to make sure the fold is in line with the flat side of the mandrel.
- Make sure the flat side of the mandrel lines up with the top of the staple’s oval.
About ¾ of the way through the tie, I suck at the top of the thread at the sides to check for leaking here. If it leaks, try re-tying slightly shorter.
After Cutting the thread, I always measure to double check that my thread didn’t go passed 47mm. I like to keep it around 46/46.5mm to be safe.
I like to use a metallic paint marker to mark the side with a crossover as the shorter side, so I never have to spend time guessing or accidentally putting the reed in the oboe the wrong way. Seal with clear coat nail polish.

Initial scrapes:

I mark my cane in three spots before scraping with a pencil on the sides. *Figure 3*
- The inception of the tip is marked at 67.5mm
  - As the reed gets more finished, this may drop to 67/66mm.
- The top of windows: 61.5/62
- Bottom of scrape: 52.5/53.5
I begin with the getting the inception started. I always scrape from the sides and leave the middle mostly alone. Naturally, it will get thin by virtue of scraping the tip more. I create the angle of the V by creating a line from 67.5 to the corners of the tip. *See Figure 4*
I start from the tip and work my way back to the bottom sides of the V, never with a horizontal scrape. Always scrape in an angled manner mirroring the angle of the V.
This will create a V that is much too large for a final reed but allows for the safeguarding of the cane in the middle region and to allow a more gradual slope. As the reed gets clipped more, the angle of the V will also drop.
Once the V is roughed in, I do 3-5 long scrapes on each quadrant of the reed, starting from 52.5mm. *See Figure 5*
Then from just below the marking for the windows, I do about 2-3 long scrapes through the tip. *See Figure 6*
By this point, the reed should be overall thinner and have a decent profile set up. If the tip is thin enough, I clip just the fold off. It should be around 72.5-73mm after clipping it open.
If the Sides of the tip seem to seal very tightly and it grips the plaque tightly, you have a solid rough scraped reed.
If the plaque is not held tightly and/or the sides of the tip don’t appear to be touching, it may be good to try a different piece of cane. You can give it a day to see if maybe it settles a bit.
The reed may be able to peep a little bit with lots of air but will not vibrate freely at this stage.

My General Ideas while rough scraping:

I like to stay away from the middle of the tip as much as possible.
Often you will create a more balanced reed by working backwards from the top of the reed. Think Thinnest to thickest.
While I don’t want to go digging into the middle of the reed anywhere, the long scrapes will need to be wide enough to reed the middle and get the bark off the middle of the reed.
I like the V to be created before letting the reed rest for the first time, so it helps to lock in the sealing.

*End of Day 1 Scrape*

*Day 2*

The focus for day 2 is to get a reed that is comfortable enough and stable to be able to play your daily scales and etudes on. It will not be broken in or trustworthy enough to play a recital or maybe even a stressful rehearsal on.

Beginning at the tip is a good start. Check for inequalities between the 4 quadrants. If one corner of the tip is thinner than the rest, thin the other three to a similar level.
If everything looks even, but is just thick, start thinning the reed. Start by thinning the corners of the tip and work your way down the sides of the tip to the inception/V. Avoid the middle of the tip.
- I like to think of the tip as a bunch of overlapping Vs that emerge from the angle of our main Inception point.
It’s likely that the reed will need to be thinner. Avoid making too stark indentations. I will go ahead and add the windows when the reed starts vibrating more freely at this stage. This will lower pitch, so make sure the reed isn’t too hard, because you’ll have to clip soon.
When the reed is crowing a double octave C, it’s probably good enough for some scales and technical etudes. My reed at this stage is usually 73/72.5mm. See and hear the reed in *Figure 7, 8, & 9*
Things to check for while playing:
- Second octave notes with their lower notes, C, B, Bb, A.
- It should be fun to play on a new reed.

*Day 3 and on*

The focus here should be to refine everything. The day 2 reed is probably comfortable for the most part, but not good enough for most musical demands, i.e. precise fast tonguing, smooth legatos, low downward slurs, even tuning throughout all registers. I like to use excerpts that I've practice a little bit to see how the reed feels on different ones.

Work on the sides and tip of the tip more.
If those are really thin or the balance is skewing so the tip is much thinner than the rest and you get a stark bottle neck, lightly brush the inception/V with gentle knife strokes to get the slope smoother.
If the reed only crows the high c and not lower, try scraping a bit more out of the window and back, but do not create a huge divot.
I find that doing some side strokes with a double hollow ground knife at the very edge of the inception/V will help with all aspects of the reed, so when in doubt, try some brush knife strokes there. Be careful not to make it thinner than the rest of the side of the tip. Don’t dig in.
Brush the very tip of the tip on both sides to get the last .25mm of the tip the very thinnest. This helps the response. Make sure to do it every time you clip.
A reed test I like to do is air attack all 3 Cs starting with the high C. This will gauge the responsiveness of the reed in all registers. See/Hear in *Figure 10 & 11*