Knives, Threads, and Blank Oboe Reeds

Today we made the sharpest knives EVAH!




Danny showed us how to sharpen our oboe reed making knives with the tools he went over during the first day.  First we went over how to use the Diamond Stone.

To use the Diamond Stone, follow these instructions:

1. Wet the stone with a little bit of water 
2. Line up the knife blade's end with one end of the stone
3. Raise the blade to a 30-45 degree angle
4. Slide the blade straight down the stone, moving the blade across diagonally to sharpen the entire blade.
5. Repeat in opposite direction with other side of blade.

Next he showed us how to use crock sticks in the following manner:

1. Slide the blade across one side with the blade facing directly down.
2. Repeat on the other side.
3. For the last stroke, put the blade facing horizontal to complete the sharpening process.

By this point, our knife was plenty sharpened, but Danny was determined to show us the Jende Steel, so we continued on and made our knife sharper than any knife we have ever seen.

Here's how the Jende Steel works:

1. First set up the Jende Steel with the sticks resting on the table (don't push down too hard) at an angle between 45 and 90 degrees.
2. Basically, it is the same process as the crock sticks.

Next we moved on to the mystical process of making blanks.

At this point, Danny turned on loud R&B music.  This was to keep anyone else who may have been spying on us from discovering this mystical secret.

Making a blank is a very specific process.  You never tie any higher than 47 mm.  Also, you make the "v" in your scrape at 66 mm (around 61 mm is the heart).  You should start the windows at about 50 mm.  Try to avoid notches at the ends of scraped areas; to fix this, should it happen, use criss-cross scrapes.  Be sure not to take off too much cane because it gets softer, thinner, overall ickier.

Once you are done, cut off the ears, do a rough scrape and tie it.  Basically, you just coat the thread in wax and then tie the end to a clamp on the table.

Then you wrap the thread around your starting point and go in one direction toward the end of the reed before doubling back.  When you double back, you just make a diagonal wrap rather than going back over the previous area.  Then you wrap up until the 47 mm point and then tie it off.  

This whole part was relatively unclear, but hopefully we can get more instruction later.