My reeds are getting better and better but they still don’t sound.

The method I like best so far is Benedict Koehler’s: he relies on the feel of the cane, it’s thickness and the amount of give when you bend it, to gauge whether or not to keep thinning the slip. Also, because he cuts the slip down to the approximate thickness with a knife, you only have to gouge a small amount of cane in order to get nice thin lips on the reed. This being said, I think that my problems lie mostly in the overall thickness of the slip: I’m having trouble getting the right amount of spring in the slip. Too much and the slip is all “bendy” and tends to crack when I gouge it; too little and the reed is stiff and I need a super-deep scrape to get the lips to actually come together. It’s also hard to gauge what amount of “spring” is correct in the reed. I have a feeling that once I’ve go the slip thickness problem corrected I’ll run into trouble with my staples… that’ll be a nice problem to have.

I’m also having a bit of trouble with the bindings since I don’t really have thread that is of an appropriate thickness. I have hemp twine that is about 125% of what I need and I have sewing thread which is about 40%-50% of what I need. I’m going to try using oboe/bassoon reed thread of standard (FF) thickness.