Occasionally, I run across an ‘aha’ moment when I am making reeds or researching a problem I am having with them. One of those moments came when I had the thought to see if my oboe mandrel was actually fulfilling its purpose. And it wasn’t. Not properly anyway.
The mandrel’s biggest purpose is to give a visual aid for whether or not your reed is tied on properly to the staple. Leaking reeds has been a bigger issue for me lately and I was struggling to figure out what the problem was. Then I found this:
It is not easy to see in this picture because I had trouble getting it to focus, but the flat sides of the mandrel do NOT line up with the “flat” side of the…part that sticks into the staple. Is there a word for that?
I have spent so much time struggling in the past with this mandrel and getting the cane positioned properly when it turns out I was being lead astray. But all is not lost, and I used this mandrel to tie a reed on straight, with no leaks, still using the mandrel as a guide. Just in a different way…
You can see a little better the angle in the above picture. I tied the reed “crooked” based on how far off the mandrel was and it worked well.
All of this is to say, check your tools to make sure they are actually functional! Don’t struggle like me, blindly trusting things and letting your reeds suffer for it. This mandrel is pretty old and has no label on it, so I don’t know the brand. Maybe a bonus tip would be to invest in high-quality tools when you can.
I also went through a phase of not even using a mandrel. This is just another version of working blindly. So now you have two of my mistakes to avoid for the price of one!
Happy reedmaking!
Avoid My Reedmaking Mistakes Series
(Benefit from my learning from my mistakes and buy handmade oboe reeds!)