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1. For the construction of bassoon reeds, one requires "Arundo Donax", a cane reed from the South of France. The pieces of cane are initially soaked in water for several hours, before being split into four, and then cut to the correct length.
2. The reed is gouged. |
3. The hardness of the reed is measured; cane that is too soft or too hard is discarded. |
4. The reed is profiled. | 5. The profiled reed is folded in the middle and mounted onto the shaper. |
6. The reed is cut according to the template of the shaper. | 7. The sides of the reed are smoothed with sand paper. |
8. Longitudinal scoring of the shaft (butt) of the reed. | 9. The folded reed is bound together at the shaft by a copper wire. |
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10. Wrapping of the reed with wet wool yarn protects it from splitting when it is warped over a mandril. In addition, the wires need to be very tight.
11. After the wrapping has been secured, two more copper wires are applied to the shaft. Thereafter the "doll" is left to dry on a drying board. |
12. After drying, the wires are tightened some more, the wire tips are trimmed. The area between the second and third wires is coated with a generous layer of “Uhu-Hart”. |
13. Now color comes into play! Colored yarn is wrapped around the shaft of the reed. |
14. The completed wrapping is coated with UhuHart – I find this glue to be particularly useful, as it dries quickly, gets very hard, and is watertight. |
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15. After the coated yarn has dried, the reed is trimmed to the correct size. Thereafter, I leave the reed to rest for at least a week.
16. The inside of the shaft is reamed until it fits snugly onto the bocal (crook). |
17. With the use of a planer, the proximal third of the reed blade is scraped according to a template. Thereafter one can already try the reed out on the instrument. |
18. Finally comes the fine work with a knives, diamond files, and sand paper. |
